


Ghost

by WellSlapMyAss-andCallMeShirley (TheAllpowerfulOZ)



Series: Ghost [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 2012 writing, Blood and graphic depictions of injury, F/M, Ghost!Sherlock, John talks to Ghosts, M/M, Pining, What if he really did just jump off Barts to his death?, kink meme fill, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 16:42:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19749673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAllpowerfulOZ/pseuds/WellSlapMyAss-andCallMeShirley
Summary: They say there is a place between waking and sleep, when we are neither here nor there. A place where the world is thinnest and mere living mortals find solace in the land of death and dreams.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> EX and I wrote this for the shkinkmeme, try as I might I couldn't find the original posting of it on the meme. We had initially wrote part of a sequel to this, but since the divorce that sequel wasn't completed. Here, however, is the original fic in its entirety.

0-0-0

_There’s a ghost in my lungs and it sighs in my sleep_

_Wraps itself around my tongue, as it softly speaks_

_Then it walks, then it walks with my legs_

_To fall, to fall, to fall at your feet_

_There but for the grace of God go I_

_And when you kiss me I am happy enough to die…_

**_Florence and the Machine_ **

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

Sherlock woke with a headache.

Lights were too bright, smearing outward in blinding coronas, burning his eyes like miniature suns. Sounds were too sharp, a roar in his ears like falling water, cabs rushing past on the street, or a great wind tearing past the windows.

His face felt hot and cold all at once, sick congested tears gluing his eyes shut, his sinuses swollen and his salivary glands were in over drive. Nausea churned his stomach and his whole right side ached—BURNED—as if he’d fallen asleep curled in the floor again and his muscles and bones protested.

He lifted a hand and tried to block out the light, throwing his forearm over his face, but it did nothing to ease the brightness.

Someone was banging on the door.

“SHUT UP!”

The sound was rough, disused. It reminded him of the time he’d caught laryngitis and no matter how hard he’d tried to scream all the voice that had come out was an inflamed rasp that often squeaked like a preadolescent boy’s.

He could hear his voice echoing about in his head like a bullet ricocheting against dank tunnel walls. It was deafening to his ears, but the air around him cold and stifling all at once, swallowed it up without preamble.

The knocking resumed.

Sherlock strained and struggled and after a few moments of stillness his body obeyed and he peeled upward off the bed and sat there, feet dangling toward the floor, bare and cold and white. He took a careful stifled breath feeling like he wasn’t getting enough air and tried again, deliberately forcing as much of his voice as he could muster from between his teeth; “SHUT! UP!”

His head swam and a moment later he found himself curled foetal on the bed again, as if presenting the thin ridge of his back, like a bony shield, would ward off the agonising pressure of the world.

It was odd, how migraines made him feel so fragile, so whisper thin like smoke wafting from the forgotten end of a cigarette. Seen and felt and experienced, but nowhere near tangible.

Migraines made him feel slow and dim-witted and unbearably frustrated that his body would dare to debilitate him so by attacking his mind in the basest way possible.

Restricting blood flow to his brain to make him be still, what a bastard.

He ground his teeth and clawed his nails into his arms in spite.

The knocking eventually ceased, maybe they had heard him… more likely Mrs. Hudson got tired of the noise and went to see to it herself. She’d give him an earful later about it. _‘I’m not your housekeeper… Do pay more attention to the door, Sherlock. That poor man was standing out there in the rain for an hour!’_

To which he would reply; _‘Then you should have let him in sooner.’_

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed abed. Moments more, hours, it felt like a lifetime, but he somehow managed to sit up again, ignoring how the room was spinning and that if he closed his eyes he felt weightless, caught in a gyroscope spinning in every direction at once—tumbling twirling spinning downdowndown—

He might have been sick, he wasn’t sure. He remembered later a bitter taste in his mouth, a wet uncomfortable sensation in his eyes and nose as he’d shuffled drunkenly away from the toilet. How strange it felt that perhaps his insides were trying to become his outsides.

He dropped onto his face across the sofa, unsettled that it felt so hard and uncomfortable beneath him, unforgiving and cold no matter how he rolled or thrashed or punched at the cushions in his agitation. He gave up eventually and resigned himself to discomfiture staring blearily up at the ceiling through watering eyes. He’d always believed there could be nothing worse than boredom or an insatiable craving for a cigarette when John had dared to think he’d been serious about quitting. Or perhaps that horrid—alien WRONG feeling of fear and uncertainty that had violated his mind and person not so very long ago in Dartmoor. Looking back on it he still found himself experiencing a strange irrational slimy sensation down his back. The feeling made him angry and frightened and spiteful. He’d discovered through a long term of introspection that his actions, when he thought about it too much, were very similar to one who had been sexually assaulted. How odd, that he would link a violation of his mind and thought process with such an animalistic act as rape.

Even now thinking about it made his skin crawl and goose flesh threaten to rise on his limbs and scalp.

He scratched his nails over his head, feeling a burn in every follicle with every twitch of fingers through his hair.

By GOD this was miserable. Migraines were worse than cigarette cravings. Worse than boredom but this was worse than all three. What was wrong? Had he caught some exotic tropical disease? Why did he ache so indomitably? As if every cell and atom of his being were rebelling and trying to tear him apart from the inside out!

And where the hell was John! John would fix this, or at least offer some form of distraction. Even if he were to just sit there and listen while Sherlock complained. He was a fantastic listener, had Sherlock ever told him that? A gift for silence John Watson…

_Where the hell are you?_

The sun crept grey and dull across the carpet and up the far wall. There was low cloud cover today and a thin blue fog over everything. Sherlock stood from the sofa a few times and stood in front of the window by his music stand and watched the street. People and taxis and the odd car moved about almost soundlessly, so slow and with what looked like immense effort. Like ants slogging it through a water puddle. Twitching and shuffling as if trapped in sticky syrup, their tiny bodies not quite large enough to escape the inevitable surface tension. So small they were that to them water was the consistency of wet concrete, cloying and drowning. But so tiny, their brains could convince them of nothing better to do than traverse the preverbal tar pits.

Sherlock looked down on them and picked them apart, a child with a magnifying lens burning the legs off insects and plucking the wings from butterflies just to watch them squirm.

Dull…

He turned away and pressed one hand to his brow. He went to the door and peered out into the corridor. The stairs loomed up at him looking so tall and twisting as he suffered another wave of vertigo.

Where the hell was John?

He turned away from the door and stomped toward the couch, grinding his toes into one of John’s medical journals on the table as he stepped onto it. He stomped a circle on the couch cushion before he dropped onto it, hoping maybe the full force of his weight would bend it into a more comfortable position. He snatched his phone from atop a stack of books on the side table and sprawled himself across the damnably uncomfortable sofa, he could barely get a signal strong enough to send a text and he snarled hatefully at the fog and the cloud cover and the barometric pressure and his damned migraine as he tried for the third time to send the text.

_I need you—SH_

It took the better part of an hour to get the damned text to go through and by that time Sherlock had slid half off the sofa and had his feet against the wall, tapping out an agitated rhythm on the paper.

When another six minutes of misery passed and John hadn’t replied he tapped out another message and sent it as well, satisfied when it went through with only four tries.

_Now—SH_

Then as an afterthought.

_Bring morphine—SH_

He must have been sick again shortly after that because he woke up suddenly lying on the tile floor in the washroom. His right side ached more savagely than before, and his head was no longer throbbing, but pounding as if someone had him by the hair and was bashing his skull against the floor repeatedly, or trying to smash his brains in with a brick. He imagined the splatter patterns on the walls and shower curtain.

The light in the room was absolutely blinding and all he could make out through it was soft grey blurs and dark patterns.

There was sound, low and garbled and stretched, like an old vinyl record played at the wrong speed.

His tongue felt thick and gummy, his eyes watery and he seemed to have sweated through his clothes. The back of his neck felt wet and when he tried to move he could feel his hair clinging in tendrils to his skin.

The world rocked on its axis and his mouth opened to cry out silently at the sudden knocking pain in his head and body and for an instant the world around him was vivid and clear and he could see John standing in front of the sink staring at his reflection. His eyes were red rimmed and his face had taken on a puffy inflamed appearance.

_John… John please, I-I can’t—_

He saw those bloodshot eyes flick in the mirror and meet his own. Saw them grow wide in shock—horror and John’s fingers tightened on the edges of the sink. He spun around, pressing himself back against the basin eyes wide, mouth dropped open in terror and his knees gave out, only his elbows keeping him upright.

The world flashed in bloody reds and cloudy sky blues and concrete greys and Sherlock tasted something thick, salty and coppery sweet in the back of his throat, choking him.

Then it was gone, all gone.

0-0-0

0-0-0


	2. Chapter 2

0-0-0

He wakes lying in the sitting room floor. Twisted awkwardly on his side and his head aches worse than it was before, but the pain now seems distant, dull. Like a smashed and swollen finger… Yes, his head feels swollen and every so often it throbs in time with his heart.

It doesn’t feel like he’s breathing, but if he concentrates he is aware of the rise and fall of his chest. Strange, he’d always found breathing boring, the same two actions—inhale exhale—repeated from birth until death, over and over and over incessantly. Mundane. Boring. Stupid.

John has mild sleep apnoea. Some evenings when the flat is quiet and John’s asleep upstairs Sherlock can hear him snoring quietly. Gentle, soft sounds—can barely consider it snoring actually—and sometimes the sounds stop and Sherlock counts the seconds.

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three…_

_Four…_

_Fi—_

And John’s body will jumpstart with a loud snort or a cough and he’ll roll over in bed to a more comfortable position.

It’s rare that it happens and usually only does when he’s particularly tired or not generally feeling well. Every so often he’ll have a bad episode, more than twice in a night and Sherlock will creep upstairs and wait, knowing that the little seizures will grow continually worse as the night wears on. He’ll stand by John’s bedside or sit there until he stops breathing then count the seconds.

If John hasn’t started breathing again by five seconds Sherlock will prod him enough that he starts again with a gasp or a snort or a jolt as he comes awake and asks just what the hell Sherlock thinks he’s doing looming over him like that! Jesus, you’ll give me a heart attack! Even more rare John will jerk awake and take a swing at him before he realizes there is no danger here, and Sherlock will stand there through the mumbled sleepy apologies as John rubs his face and takes deep breaths, asking what’s the matter.

On nights like that, when he’s caught, Sherlock will usually bring up a case, or blurt out a deduction of some kind, or allude to an experiment he’s been contemplating.

John will be annoyed, but annoyed in such a way that when he falls asleep again it is only a light sleep, and therefore unlikely that he’ll have another episode. Sherlock leaves then without worry.

He wonders now, lying there in the floor aware of his breath but not aware of breathing, if this is what John feels like all the time, afraid that if he doesn’t completely focus on his respiration that it could suddenly and inexplicably stop and he would fade away into death without notice.

John’s not here to prod him, or give him a shake to inspire breath again. If he doesn’t concentrate on it, could it be possible that his lungs would simply stop?

It’s terrifying and for a while he lies there utterly absorbed with each inhale and exhale. His heart loud and pounding in his head and ears.

He lies there most of the day, twice he hears movement in the flat and flicks his eyes upward to see a shadow moving about in the kitchen. Slow as if though water. He can almost feel who it is, just like normally the flat just FEELS of John so much it’s hard to tell if the man himself has left or not.

He wonders a few times if conversing with the man’s lingering presence in the room is a sign of dementia, so he says nothing as the shadow of John moves around the flat.

He’s speaking softly to himself, words that don’t really make much sense. Listing things… As if he’s packing for something.

Spending a weekend holiday in the country with HER probably, will John still be able to tolerate him when he returns? Will he still be able to look at his flatmate, sprawled so on the rug and be able to talk to him? Crouch down so they can converse on the same level? Perhaps lie himself down on the rug as well and spend a while asking; ‘I have a puzzle for you, if you want it… I saw a man today—a patient— with a bald head, wide pores, squinty pale eyes. He has a bacterial infection and a rash on his genitals. He’s just returned from a week long Holiday in Japan, he says… But I know for a fact it was raining in the part of Japan he says he visited and he’s got a new tan—has lines on his temples where he’s been wearing sunglasses and the top of his head is still red from sunburn… What do you make of it?’

And Sherlock would ask a few questions. The man’s age, his weight. What he was wearing. Is he married? Oh, yes… Of course—He didn’t go to Japan, he went to Korea… South Korea Most likely, and has come home with a nasty case of syphilis from the under-aged prostitute he hired.’

John would smile and chuckle in a darkly amused fashion. ‘He wasn’t too happy when I told him it was Syphilis… Called me a bloody quack and left in a fit.’

‘Not your fault if he’s in a strop… He shouldn’t want to have unprotected sex with fifteen-year-old boys.’

John would be quiet then turn with scrunched brows; ‘How do you know it was a boy?’

Sherlock would snort and turn back to the ceiling; ‘You said yourself he was fat and wearing silk pants.’

‘What does that have to do—“

‘Any sane man with a rash on his genitals is NOT going to wear silk pants to the doctor… unless they’re the only kind he owns, and there are only three types of men who own all silk pants. And seeing that your patient was neither young—nor physically fit, and thankfully he was not my brother, I can only conclude that—‘

‘You’re making this up… you guessed. You can’t know that—Wait, did you say your broth—no, never mind, I don’t want to know,’ John would be laughing by that point and Sherlock would join him just for the absurdity of the situation.

Sherlock is smiling at himself when the shadow of John moves through the sitting room.

John sits down in his chair, head leaned into his hands, he rubs at his brow, then at his leg and the next second Sherlock blinks and John isn’t in his chair, isn’t even in the flat and the whole space feels cold and empty.

_I’m sick._ He thinks, _I’ve caught some incurable disease._ He heaves himself up and crawls drunkenly to the sofa then flattens himself across it like a pilgrim on the floor of a saint’s tomb.

He squints about but can’t find his phone. It’s not where he left it last, there’s a naked place in the thin sheet of dust over everything where the phone was supposed to be. Where it had been for days now… Weeks maybe.

His head aches even harder.

“John, where’s my phone!” A weekly occurrence at the best. He’d have it over there by the desk one day tapping away in the sun, and lay it aside. It would wind up covered over in the usual fashion, just like everything important did. His cigarettes, his rosin. Scraps of sheet music he’s torn to shreds in anger when he can’t articulate well enough to compose.

Then he’d spend a frantic fifteen minutes searching madly for it, tripping over things as he displaces them, and John—brilliant John—would pull his own from his pocket and dial Sherlock’s number and—

AH! There it was, under the bookshelf.

“John, I NEED my phone!” He called out, then shook his head because the whole reason he needed his phone was to call John and tell him to come home and tell him he wasn’t going to die.

So he closed his eyes and tried to think like John… God what a headache.

John always kept his phone in his pocket… His hip pocket, or the inside pocket of his coat.

Phone. Phonephonephone.

He fishes in his pocket and grins triumphantly to himself when he can feel it there, next to his heart. He has to squint at it to bring the screen into focus. He would rather text, simply because it’s less expensive but he doesn’t think he has the strength to articulate words with his thumbs, so he calls.

It rings for ages and he becomes terribly aware of his breathing again, focused entirely on drawing each gasp, and each tone in his ear. Each dull ring until he feels so very thin and wraith like he can barely stay conscious— and then as the last of his strength is bleeding through his fingers the call connects.

The line is naught but static and low unearthly groaning noises. Like an old cassette being eaten by the recorder. Yet the more he focuses the clearer the voice is;

“’llo—Yes? I-I can’t hear you you’ll have to speak up?”

He feels something in him break because the sound, is so loud, so solid and real and so utterly JOHN he can’t do anything but breathe into the phone.

“Listen, I can’t—you… You’ll ha—call ba—“

_“John?”_ He can barely hear his own voice, just a wheeze; _“John, I’m sick… I… Please, I need you.”_

_0-0-0_

_0-0-0_

_0-0-0_


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock blinks lazily, feeling thin and breath like. The world has narrowed to a pinprick of an unfamiliar ceiling and deformed shadows moving back and forth over him.

And then there is John.

“What have you done to yourself this time?”

Sherlock takes a slow breath and lets it out, cracking his eyes open. Yes. There IS John. Sitting in his chair right in front of him. He smiles weakly but genuinely and tries to speak, but the sounds that come out are strained.

“John… I’m sick.”

“I can see that,” John says and climbs to his feet. He lifts a hand, petting it over Sherlock’s head. His hair feels wet, sticky, and John pulls his hand back, hoping Sherlock doesn’t notice how he scrubs it on his trouser leg. He lifts the hand again and brushes the back of his knuckles against the detective’s cheek; “You’re chilled.”

Sherlock looks startled, eyes narrowed; “I can feel you…” John feels warm but not quite there, epithermal, like warm air kissing his skin, sinking into him and he reaches up and pulls his hand over his heart, pressing it there with as much strength as he can muster. “You’re not cold.”

John shakes his head, amused, and sits on the couch letting Sherlock flop over his lap and curl up. “Of course not. Why would I be cold?”

“You’ve completely ignored me the past few days… I-I’ve been sick… I called you, texted you and you never even so much as replied. If I hadn’t seen you in the flat afterward I would have been convinced you’d been kidnapped again… You didn’t come when I needed you.”

Sherlock is still looking up at him puzzled, tilting his head this way and that as if not exactly sure what he’s looking at. It was an alien expression on his face. “You’re different…”

“No I’m not…”

“Something’s different… You’ve not talked to me before, you just walk around talking as if I’m there but I’m not.”

“Oh, and you’ve never done that to me?”

“That was different.”

“How was that different?”

He opens his mouth to say so but at that moment something else changes. His vision goes white and for a long heartbeat there is an inky black shadow looming over him and he hurts—HURTS more than he ever has. His head and chest and everything _hurts._

“Sherlock!”

Someone screams. A quick horrified—shocked—bark of denial and the white noise is back. The same white noise that dominates his phone when he tries to call John. Roaring, whipping devouring all other sound.

And then it stops.

0-0-0

John wakes with a name on his lips and a hand over his mouth, holding in sobs. Its morning, but he feels utterly exhausted. Drained physically and mentally.

Behind his eyes the dream blinks and stutters and replays like a film reel. Sherlock lying in his arms on the sofa, cold… so very cold, shivering and staring up at him in confusion, it wasn’t right, Sherlock was never confused.

_“Something’s different…”_

John’s hand in his hair, warm against that wet, sticky mop of curls, gently massaging the ache from his head… How the black pinpricks of his pupils twitched and began to expand— And then the dome of Sherlock’s skull cracked between his hands like an egg shell and there was blood… so much blood! On his hands, on the tarmac, running from Sherlock’s ears and nose and lips, little bloody tears seeping from the corner of his eyes.

His right arm and leg are twisted and broken and a shard of bone is protruding through a tear in his shirt, there is blood frothed around it and John sees it all, KNOWS that Sherlock hadn’t died instantly when he’d hit… He’d lived five—maybe fifteen seconds longer than that. Long enough to aspirate blood and bile and his shattered chest to fill with foamed blood from his last, lingering breaths.

_“You didn’t come when I needed you.”_

John screams silently at the ceiling and pounds his fist into the mattress.

_“You’re different.”_

_“No, I’m not.”_

_“Something’s different… You’ve not talked to me before, you just walk around talking as if I’m there but I’m not.”_

_“Oh, and you’ve never done that to me?”_

_“That was different.”_

_“How was that different?”_

_“When you came back, I saw you…”_

John doesn’t wait for Greg to show up that afternoon. He calls, the sun isn’t up yet, but Greg is awake.

“I—I can’t do this, Greg… I keep seeing him in my dreams—“

Greg swallows and John can hear his throat click; “You got another text didn’t you…”

John hesitates, then looks to his phone, and sure enough, he has got another text. “Christ.”

“I saw it happen,” Greg is quiet for a moment, he’s never believed in Ghost stories after all, but he can admit that he feels like he’s in one, feels a bit like Alice having just tumbled down the rabbit hole into a wholly familiar and yet alien world. “I was packing and having a coffee… The Phone lit up— I sat here and watched it. Nothing opened, it didn’t even turn on, but it lit up and when I held it to my ear— curious like—I could hear—” He takes a slow breath; “You’re not crazy, John. Whatever’s happening, you’re not crazy.”

0-0-0

0-0-0


	4. Chapter 4

Greg’s sister is practically a feminine version of him. The same nose and mouth, same brow, but where Greg has naturally let his hair fade his sister has kept hers a rich chocolate brown cropped to her shoulders and pulled back at the crown of her head in a little ‘S’ of a tail.

She’s thin, but broad in shoulder and hip and greets Greg affectionately as ‘Arsehole,’ while she balances a spindly legged little girl with the same dark eyes and hair on her hip.

The little girl grins and shows the gap of a missing tooth and shouts; “UNCLE GREG!” loudly enough to wake the dead and promptly wraps her arms about his neck and refuses to let go.

“Hullo, Adele”

‘Charlie’ as he calls his sister—short for Charlotte—doesn’t seem to mind John’s not quite expected presence, she smiles politely and shakes his hand while she ushers two small boys with similar looks to the little girl back into the house from which they’ve escaped and are attempting to rend Greg in half by pulling in opposite directions on his arms.

“I’ve got the place fixed up for you. Just leave your things there and by the time you come back I’ll have sandwiches and tea.”

The two boys decide it is their duty to heft Greg’s bag out the kitchen door and across the garden to the small guest house. It’s built of stone with ivy growing up one side and has a large picture window and sliding door where the traditional garage door once was. The ground floor is open, a sitting room and kitchen, and the first floor is two warm bedrooms a cupboard and two small en suites with shower stalls instead of tubs.

There’s a pond just beyond the guest house over which there is a leaning tree with a dangling rope in it. The water is clean and clear and John can imagine the children playing in it and chasing the few large fish he can see swimming in the deeper end.

Greg doesn’t seem to mind John’s presence, which is a relief because John had believed he would be a nuisance or some third wheel on the ex-detective inspector’s holiday. It turned out to be quite the opposite.

Charlie’s husband was a very large git. Blonde, Greg’s build with glasses and blue eyes. When he was home it was rare that any sound came from the house. No laughing children or rowdy play in the garden. When they did come outside they sat quietly in the path and tinkered with some elaborate electronic toy and waited until daddy unlocked the door to let them in again.

John didn’t even bother learning his name, just joined Greg in referring to him as ‘Dick’. Though, it is possible that this was his name and not just an observation as to his personality.

Dick travelled for his work and often spent days on end away.

John felt a niggling little voice in the back of his mind picking apart Dick’s behaviour and by the fourth day he’d confided in Greg that he believed Dick was verbally and psychologically abusing Charlie and that he didn’t want to pry, but perhaps Greg should keep watch on him because he couldn’t understand how a man as successful as Dick would prefer to stay in a hotel that was an hour out of his way than in his own home.

Greg smiled over the rim of his mug and his eyes danced; “You said almost exactly the same thing Sherlock said after he met the bastard… Do you know?” He chuckled; “Only I admit you were a lot less blunt with it… Sherlock said ‘He’s been bullying her into performing increasingly degrading sex acts and is trying unsuccessfully to find a mistress so he’ll have an excuse to leave her and the children, but he’s too stupid to do even that properly.’”

John couldn’t smile about it but still found it somewhat amusing that he’d managed to make practically the same deduction Sherlock had, even if it had taken him four days and probably only took Sherlock four seconds.

“He hasn’t laid a hand on her yet… but mark my words, John. The instant he does…” He let the sentence hang in the air and John did smile then.

Those first five days were almost mundane. Watching Greg teach the kids the finer points of football, how to bounce the ball on their knees without toppling over. He even convinced John to leave his computer and the blank document he’d been staring at for ages in order to play a child’s version of rugby, complete with the twin boys—John could tell now they were twins—tackling Greg to the ground in a fantastic display of speed and prowess which was mostly hanging off Greg’s arms and shirt until he was ‘felled’ before snatching the ball and running in circles with it screaming.

Then afterward, when the children were enthralled with something on the telly and Charlie was putting away dinner Greg and John walked into town and sat at a small table in the back of the local and talked nonsense until John had enough alcohol in his system to stop thinking about Sherlock and the phones that had been utterly silent on the guest house worktop for five days now.

Charlie was kind, and on the instances when John couldn’t make himself feel cheerful enough to play ‘rugby’ with Greg and the kids she would sit beside him on the stoop and whisper kindly, or let John talk about everything and nothing at all. She understood what it was like to lose a loved one, she and Greg had lost their younger brother Samuel to a drunk driver just two years before, Greg still didn’t like to talk about him and it was no surprise, she said, that John didn’t know.

She didn’t even seem overly surprised when John slipped one evening as his mood was particularly dark and mentioned the phone call, and how familiar and terrifying the voice on the other end had been.

She crossed her arms over her knees and spoke quietly, eyes on her children and brother; “John, have you ever visited a medium?”

“Medium? Is that like a fortune teller? Crystal balls and incense and gypsy curses, like in Lon Chaney or Boris Karloff films?”

Charlie chuckled lightly and propped her jaw on her fist; “Not exactly… There’s a woman in town who fancies herself a psychic medium… Greg and I went to her after Sam’s death, Sherlock— he came for the funeral, not that he was asked along, but anyway— he said she was an idiot with mildly competent observation skills and would be better off acting in pornography—“

“He said your brother was an idiot frequently enough… pornography, really?”

Charlie giggled and shook her head.

John didn’t think much more of it until the next day when he was packing. Feeling slightly more stable, he’d told Greg he felt it would be best if he went back to London and tried to pick up the pieces. That he knew it was most likely a prank, or something worse, and he’d have Harry call and change the phone’s number.

Then, just as he was hefting his bag down the stairs Charlie called from the garden gate; “Hey, Army Boy… Come on.

The kids were in school by then and wouldn’t be home yet for hours, Greg was seeing to a few small household projects Dick couldn’t be arsed to keep up with, John saw no reason not to at least see what Charlie wanted.

She was dressed as usual. Denim trousers and a tee over which she’d layered an olive green tailored jacket with pink buttons, she twirled the keys to her car on one finger expertly and motioned to the passenger door. “You can put your bag in the back I’ll drop you at the train station afterward.”

John checked his watch, he still had an hour and a half or so until his train left… what was the harm?

The drive was pleasant. Charlie pointed out a few landmarks he’d ‘have to see when you come back’. The public park, a small museum, the book shop and a few other shops.

And then John noticed the sign in front of the house where Charlie stopped the car and he felt a heavy sense of dread settle in his stomach.

“It’s on me… You sounded earlier like you could use a bit of guidance.”

John didn’t say that he was of the opinion that most ‘psychics’ were quacks same as Sherlock had and that Sherlock had once posed as a psychic to get evidence for a case and fooled one such ‘professional’ who was frequently on telly for her ‘gifts’.

He didn’t want to sound like an ass, so he nodded and climbed slowly out of the car. Charlie walked beside him up the path, her hands shoved into her pockets; “She’s not that bad… stop acting like you’re going to your death.”

He chuckled and tried to relax himself, but couldn’t quite manage.

She called herself Iris Jade… And she met them at the door.

John had expected someone like the woman from the telly. All frizzy hair, caked on rouge and flowing black and silver clothes with gaudy rings on each finger.

Instead there was a young woman in a jumper and a brown skirt. She wasn’t wearing shoes and a little bell jingled softly from around her left ankle.

There was a line of coarse salt in front of her door.

She introduced herself firmly and shook John’s hand then Charlie’s and invited them both into her sitting room.

The inside of her small house felt airy, light… thin almost and more than once John found himself glancing from the corner of his eye nervously.

Iris Jade’s cat appraised him critically from atop a tall bookshelf.

“I’ll wait out here, yeah?” Charlie said smiling as she settled herself on a floral patterned sofa near the door.

John nodded, shook his head and wetted his lips; “What, sorry?”

“Just follow me, Dr. Watson, it’s alright…” Iris Jade motioned him into the kitchen and let the door shut quietly behind them.

“Have a seat, I’ll just be a moment,” She disappeared back into the sitting room with a cup of tea for Charlie and when she returned John was still standing there looking somehow lost.

Iris Jade leaned her back against the sink and crossed her arms over her chest. “Go on, I don’t bite.”

He shook his head; “Sorry—“

“Don’t be sorry, you’re nervous. It’s normal. Most people come in here convinced of the fact I’m a liar or one of those cheap side show acts.”

“Aren’t you?”

She smiled kindly; “Your friend there mentioned you’d recently lost someone… How recent are we talking?”

John swallowed, “About three, maybe four months ago?” Ninety-four days. His brain supplied… Ninety-four days of hell and empty phone calls.

“Would you like to try and communicate with them?”

John shook his head, the colour draining from his face. “Communication isn’t the problem… well, not the lack of it anyway.”

“Oh? You mean they’ve already contacted you?”

John wasn’t sure if he should trust this strange woman with the kind eyes and the long pale hair tied back from her round face. He didn’t intrinsically trust anyone because everyone had such a high potential of lying to him. People, as a whole, were dishonest, rude, spiteful and often violent. He’d only met a handful of truly good people and the majority of them were dead.

Even Sherlock, who was honest in his dishonesty and unflinching in his often rude and calloused seeming behaviour, even in his loud and disruptive outbursts he had never purposefully set out to harm someone for his own enjoyment. Most usually he was terribly and innocently blunt with his observations because he saw no use in lying about it. He gave you exactly what you asked for without any reserves. If you said ‘deduce me’ that’s exactly what he did, down to the finest detail. People were only shocked because they’d meant when they said it; ‘Tell me the good things about myself’, not ‘tell me what you see’.

John though, was a man of truth himself and he respected that in Sherlock… _had_ respected it.

He knew nothing about this woman and yet… if he looked, if he observed, perhaps he could see a little more.

He felt his brow wrinkle in concentration and he wondered how Sherlock had ever been able to do it without walking round with a look of perpetual constipation on his face.

_Iris Jade… Obviously not her real name. A pseudonym. Stage name… Why would she want a stage name? Is she hiding from someone? No… Anyone who would meet you on their front step with a smile and a handshake wouldn’t really be hiding from someone._

_So, it’s not because she’s hiding… why then. Because it’s expected? Because nobody goes to see a psychic medium named Mildred Smithe or something? If they go to someone like this they want an experience, they want the gauzy curtains and the incense and the crystal balls… and since she hasn’t got those that means she’s not here to give people a show so no… not because it’s expected. She calls herself that because of something else… Iris, a flower… purple flower most usually. Jade, greenish, bluish… a precious stone. Right… it means something, that’s why she calls herself that. It means something to her._

_Okay, no crystal ball, no tawdry incense just something light… sandalwood. Okay… No crystal ball, no show, light unobtrusive incense, no heavy atmosphere like you would expect. So she’s not doing this the way one would expect. Her nails are short and there are callouses on her hands so she doesn’t do this as her main form of income. She works elsewhere, There are quite a few ceramic vases and bowls… Pottery, ceramics. Yes, that makes sense, the shed out back had a chimney, probably a kiln there. But there’s no clay under her fingernails, so she’s not been at it—not recently anyway. House is tidy and well kept, frequently cleaned… Books, lots of books, so she likes to read—can’t blame her there—Good books as well… I’ve been wanting to read that one…_

_No car in the drive, nor sign of one being around long enough to belong to her, she most likely walks or ride’s a bicycle… Judging from the path round the front of the house a bicycle. Why? Environmentally aware? Can’t afford a car? Probably both and this is a small village so it makes sense. Okay, judging by it’s age and the corresponding age of the photographs on the wall this house was most likely passed down from a family member then instead of bought by her since she can’t afford a car… It’s possible her name was chosen to reflect family member’s names? Mother, grandmother perhaps? Someone she respects and loves deeply… That photo in her sitting room, older photo, elderly woman—Grandmother then. Perhaps a connection with the art itself. Grandmother was a medium as well._

_She’s casual about this not something she’s just picked up recently then. She’s been doing this a while, she’s comfortable._

_She’s young though… early thirties at the most, possibly well educated, but there are no certificates on the walls. Extended family though, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews… she’s unmarried, not seeing anyone—her legs aren’t shaved—Probably not trimmed either… Christ, hold it together Watson no time to be thinking about that— Inexpensive jewellery, braided string on her right wrist, muscles there are not as well developed as those on the left—left handed, imagine that, bell on her left ankle, studs in her ears, pendant on a chain… pink stone… quartz… rose quartz… rose quartz is for healing, where did I read that?_

“Dr. Watson?”

He blinked at her, startled. How long had he been just staring at her?

She was smiling kindly, her cheeks lightly flushed. “So, you’ve made contact with this person you’ve lost?”

He swallowed the dry feeling in his throat; “He… he’s contacted me.”

She nodded. “You were very still there for a moment, what were you thinking about?”

He hesitated, flexed his hands and spoke; “I was wondering if your grandmother taught you how to do this, or if it was one of those things that they say are passed down intermittently through generations.”

The corner of her lip twitched. “I could always do this, she taught me how to control it.”

He felt a tremor run through him and he motioned to the pendant dangling around her neck; “And what exactly are you hoping to be healed from?”

Her smile widened but it didn’t meet her eyes; “Inoperable brain tumour… I was given a year, two if I’m lucky.”

His legs felt weak and he groped behind him for a chair at the table and sat heavily in it. Funny… Sherlock never mentioned how eerie it felt to be able to know these things about a person simply by looking at them.

_Is this me?_ He thought. _Am I doing it? Am I, or is this… is this something else._

“How long have you been able to see these things, Dr. Watson?”

She slid into the chair opposite him and folded her hands together under her left ear.

“I don’t see them… Well, I do, but not in a psychic sense… It’s logic, deduction.”

She nodded. “There’s a difference between psychics and myself… Psychics practice observation, deduction and manipulation by vague suggestion more than any true talent. What I know, I know because I feel it, not because my mind tells me it’s true.”

He nodded.

“You’re troubled by your friend’s death—and before you say it— yes I know who you are. I was a big fan of your blog.”

John shifted uncomfortably, still not used to the idea that it was his doing that made so many people privy to Sherlock and his work. He somehow felt it was his fault.

_If I can do it too, that means he wasn’t a fake… That means he was right and he died for nothing._

“You believe he’s contacted you from beyond?”

John swallowed; “You know me… I-I know enough about you now, so just tell me… Tell me if you can feel him, or if I’m wasting my time and some bastard’s doing this—sending me those messages just to drive me to suicide… because they’re close—very close.”

She didn’t look startled, but her throat worked nervously anyway. After a moment of staring at him she took a deep breath and let her eyes close.

John didn’t feel anything, though perhaps his heart racing made him think he did.

When she opened her eyes she let her breath out with a sigh; “I don’t feel him near you, Dr. Watson… But you are very angry and upset and frightened by what’s happening, I can tell…”

He slouched back in his seat and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Validation? One of those teary ethereal reunions like on telly? She’d start with something small, ‘Does anybody have a lost loved one whose name starts with ‘S’?’ And by law of averages, someone in the crowd would. They’d raise their hands, if it was more than one person she’d strike out a little, observing her crowd; ‘Male, taller…’ Of course a person’s definition of taller is fluid. The female ‘S’s would sit down. ‘Darkish hair and bright eyes,’ again, bright was a general term and does not necessarily mean light in colour. Three broad generalizations that mean nothing but sound oh so specific. Then she would mention something about a blue coat, or a coat worn with something blue. Who didn’t have a blue coat or a coat with a bit of blue associated with it, especially someone as well dressed as Sherlock. ‘He’s left you something in the coat pocket,’ And of course there would be something in that coat pocket, but it would have nothing to do with spiritual visitation or hauntings or anything like that. Everyone forgot things in their coat pockets, their keys and scraps of paper, notes or little trinkets. Then the pieced résistance, _‘He’s right behind you there. He says he’s happy now, things are better and he says he loves and values you’_ Who wouldn’t want to hear that from a departed loved one… what rubbish. Sherlock wouldn’t say that. He’d say _‘You’re out of milk, John,’_ or _‘Don’t be an idiot she’s clearly just manipulating the crowd!’_

He took a deep breath and let it shudder out again, ready for anything she had to throw at him.

“… If you feel so upset by this I can suggest, perhaps a cleansing… I take it from your exasperation that it hasn’t happened since you left London?”

He nodded.

“Where did it start?”

“The flat,” He said into his hand; “I got pissed and went to the flat to box up things—got sick in the washroom sink and saw him in the mirror… He was covered in b-blood and kept b-begging me to help him.”

She nodded; “You’ve approached this logically?”

“I was drunk, I most likely hallucinated, but I’ve seen him in my dreams, and it’s always the same… We’re in the flat and its normal enough, then he says his head hurts and…” He tilted his head back and gestured wildly; “Then it all breaks apart and I’m kneeling on the street again and he’s dying in my arms, begging me to help and I can’t…”

“I know you’re not an overly spiritual man, Dr. Watson… But perhaps you would be best advised to have a priest, or I can recommend a few unaffiliated individuals, who can perform a cleansing of your flat. Even if nothing is there, it could ease your mind. Just as often as something like this is spiritual, it’s psychological.”

“So, you’re saying I should have a priest bless the flat for the placebo effect?” He wiped moisture from his eyes.

“If it is psychological it could help, and if it’s spiritual it could help… There really isn’t anything to lose. This is about your peace of mind. If what is happening is bothering you something should be done to stop it happening.”

He regarded her silently for a moment, then broke out into a fit of giggles as he covered his face with his hand. For some reason he couldn’t see Sherlock disliking this woman. He would probably pretend just to be obstinate, but anyone who could so easily take into account logic as well as spirituality in the same instant and make it sound so effortless would have at least garnered a ‘not quite as stupid as I’d at first believed’.

She was damnably convincing anyway. 

0-0-0

0-0-0


	5. Chapter 5

The train ride back to London was quiet, John sat in his compartment staring out the window with one hand in his pocket fingering the bit of paper on which Iris Jade had written a few names and telephone numbers so he could contact and have the person of his choice come to ‘cleanse’ the flat.

It was cloudy and threatening rain when he exited the train station and found a cab, going to his small room to deposit his bag before he washed his face for courage and struck out toward Baker Street.

He would ask Mrs. Hudson for permission before he did anything at all to 221B. It was only right, he’d forfeited his right to come and go as he pleased by leaving in the first place. Besides, if he was having a rough go of it he was positive she was taking it worse. She and Sherlock may have argued often, but they cared. In fact, John would be willing to lay money on the fact they may have even loved one another in spite of their little games to rile the other.

Mrs. Hudson answered the door and almost stumbled back in shock before with a teary smile she embraced him there on the stoop and drew him in. They had the conversation over tea and biscuits… biscuits it looked like the poor woman hadn’t stopped baking since John had started screaming upstairs that evening two weeks ago and shouting at the top of his voice that he’d seen Sherlock in the mirror and OH the blood on his face! There was BLOOD on his FACE!

It hadn’t been a pleasant evening, that. Not by any means.

John cleared his throat and tried to tell her what had been happening to him, without actually telling her. He didn’t want to excite her, didn’t want to cause a fainting spell or palpitations—

“John Dear… I’m not made of glass… And you’re not the only one who has seen things,” She fingered the rim of her cup; “I wake up sometimes and I swear I can see him standing at the foot of my bed staring at me… He’d done that a few times in Florida. He’d work himself to the point of collapse and his mind would go off on a tangent and he’d just wander around aimlessly until he found his train of thought again. It startled me the first few times… But then it was a bit of a comfort, I felt as if he was watching over me. Like he’s a guardian angel… I haven’t SEEN anything in a few weeks, but I still feel him around sometimes.”

John didn’t say that every time he’d seen Sherlock he’d been asking—pleading by anyone else’s standards—for help. And it was terrifying because Sherlock rarely asked for help, at least help that could be considered true help and not laziness. Coming across the city to send a text for him was not actually help.

“So you think it could be him? Or maybe an evil spirit pretending to be him?”

John looked at the table and tried to recover control of the conversation.

“Should we call someone? I have a friend she’s one of that New Age lot, the ones who worship Harry Potter… She knows quite a bit about ghosts and hauntings. I bet she’d come right over tonight if I promised her biscuits… You’ll like her, she’s very pretty.”

John flinched, he couldn’t think of the word ghost or haunting in connection to this. It was painful to even hint at, thinking of Sherlock’s spirit stuck here, locked up stairs alone forever. _Stop it,_ he shook his head, _It is purely psychological._ _It’s just one of Moriarty’s bastards trying to drive you mad and discredit you as well. That’s all it is._

He opened his mouth to tell Mrs. Hudson that it wasn’t necessary, he’d looked over the list Iris Jade had given him and was going to call one of the priests she’d recommended in the morning. Sherlock would have opposed it entirely but begrudgingly given in if John had said it wasn’t for the detective, but for his own peace of mind and if Sherlock didn’t like it he could politely sod off.

“No, it’s perfectly alright, Mrs. Hudon, I—“

But she’d already scurried out of the room and plucked up her telephone from its cradle.

He heard her talking and tried not to feel exasperated.

“Yes, Hullo ‘Livia Dear, it’s Martha—Martha Hudson… YES, from Baker Street! Oh, that’s lovely, is it a rather large toad? Heavens, that is a large toad… Yes, Dear I’ve been getting on well as can be expected… No, I haven’t noticed anything flying about, sorry. ‘Livia, I think there may be something here that would interest you… You remember my lodgers… Yes, thank you Dear, it means a lot coming from you… But the thing is, ‘Livia, The Doctor is here and he says he’s been having… visitations— We’ve both seen things and heard things—just footsteps, like someone’s up there, and when I’m dozing off in front of the telly I swear to you I can hear him talking—He always used to just prattle on and on to that skull of his,” Her voice hiccoughed and she apologized into the phone for a moment and took a deep breath before she spoke again; “We don’t know what it is, ‘Livia… Could it be him? Or… Or is it one of those Dark Spirits you were talking about at Mrs. Turner’s last time… Oh, would you, Dear? I-I’ll make some of those chocolate biscuits you like so much—Oh, thank you, ‘Livia, thank you… Yes, of course, Dear, take your time.”

John bowed his head into his folded arms over the table top and waited until Mrs. Hudson came back into the room patting her face with a crumpled tissue. “Right then… I should go up and dust the place, it’s frightfully messy and I don’t want that busybody telling everyone what a horrible house keeper I am—“ She caught herself and waggled a finger at him fondly then gave her head a shake as she went to the cupboard to fish out her cleaning supplies.

John pushed back from the table and made his way into the sitting room hands in his pockets fingers feeling the shape of his key. His heart sped up just at the thought of going up there again, feeling that encroaching, pressing sensation of a person too close and yet so far away. He didn’t like it one bit.

_It’s psychological. It’s all in your head, Watson. All in your head… Just like that damned limp._

He thought, perhaps, he would rather have had the limp at that moment than be forced to walk up those steps and face the lifeless cold cave the flat had become. Would it be better to do it now and have his moments of panic in solitude where no one would see how his pupils dilated and his breath quickened in fear? So no one would see him cover his face as he was bombarded with memories of watching Sherlock’s coat flutter like wings as he’d plummeted downdowndown—

“John Dear, are you alright?”

He swiped the tip of his tongue across his lips and nodded. “I’ll go up now and start, no sense in you doing it all on your own… you’re not the house keeper.”

He didn’t stay long enough to hear her reply, just took a slow deep breath and went out, pausing before the steps to stare up them uncomfortably. He started upward slowly, feeling a strange twinge in his leg at every upward tread.

_You can do this Watson… You can, it’s just the flat—there’s nothing there. Even the fucking psychic said that it was in your head… There are no such things as ghosts and not even Sherlock Holmes could change that._

His key sounded too loud as it slid into the lock, each tumbler clicking audibly over the groves and slots. It twisted slowly in his fist and he took a deep breath before he pushed the door open and stood there as if on the edge of a cliff, staring wide eyed and gasping quietly into the unnaturally dark room.

The drapes had been drawn closed and the thin bars of dim evening sunlight passing between them were thick with silvery dust motes. The room smelled stale, sharp like old paper and faded chemicals and something that was distinctly SHERLOCK.

John rubbed feeling back into his lips but couldn’t bring himself to step inside just yet. It took a considerable amount of courage he felt drained of at the moment. Physical danger he could handle quite easily. Psychological danger was another matter.

And then the phone in his pocket buzzed and John nearly leapt out of his skin. He fumbled for it and stared with wide eyes at the screen.

Lestrade…

He sighed, relieved and perhaps a bit disappointed and answered the call. “Hullo?”

“My sister’s taken a liking to you… Think she’s got a bit of a crush.”

“Your sister—” He said, rubbing his brow,”—is married, Greg, and doesn’t look like she’ll be single any time soon unless she takes some initiative… And I’m sorry, but are you honestly trying to set me up with your sister—Your _married_ sister?”

“I can hope, can’t I? You’d be far better for her than the bastard she’s with.”

John rubbed his brow; “Look, can you call back later? Now’s not a good time.”

“Ah, busy then… I’ll try you again tomorrow—Oh, you haven’t seen The Phone, have you? I could have sworn it was on the bench there, and now I can’t find it.”

John opened his mouth but his free hand moved on its own and he felt a strange lump in his jacket pocket. His fingers shook as he pulled it free, eyes widening in alarm.

“I was going to send it off to Clarke tomorrow—finally got hold of him, he’s been on Holiday to visit his mother—He said he’d run a diagnostic… John are you alright? You’re breathing’s turned funny.”

John couldn’t remember picking the phone up. He’d come down the stairs from packing and looked at it lying there cold and lifeless and alien beside Greg’s phone, and he could have sworn on his very life that he’d left it there. How had it got into his pocket!

“John?”

He swallowed and his voice shook; “I have it… I don’t know how but I have it.”

“Oh… right—Well, Clarke said he’d take a look at it. You could drop it off to him tomorrow I suppose. It would be less likely to be swapped out if someone _is_ just putting you on, if it didn’t go through the post.”

John nodded and was opening his mouth to speak when, without warning, the phone lit up in his hand.

He nearly dropped it in his surprise.

“What th—“ His jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed as the phone continued to glow—not turning on, not opening an application, just glowing emptily.

“What is it?” Greg’s voice was curious on the other end of the line.

“It—It’s lit up again.”

Greg was quiet, but it was a tense quiet, and John remembered Greg telling him about the phone behaving so unnaturally, how even though there had been no power to it, it had still lit up and when he’d held it to his ear he’d been able to hear something.

“Look, Greg, I’ll—I’ll call you back in a few,” He disconnected the call and took a slow deep breath, then slowly lifted Sherlock’s phone to his ear.

The very instant it got near enough that he could make out a soft buzz of white noise the phone released a single quick pip and went dark once more. John let out a long sigh and without thinking strode into the flat and dropped the phone onto the table, which had been cleared of Sherlock’s equipment. There were a few chemical burns on the top and faded rings from god only knew. He switched on the light and sat heavily down facing the oven and sat his phone down as well, keys splayed out like a star beside it. He sat there for a moment then with a low sigh bowed his head into his hands.

“I’ve lost it… That’s all there is to it, I have officially lost my mind,” He chuckled humourlessly and hummed as he scrubbed his eyes, leaning back in his chair far enough that he could have tipped it up onto the back legs if he’d wished and stretched his arms high above his head; “John Watson, certifiably insane… Haha, joke’s on you Sherlock, I was a nutter long before I met you… Was a nutter for putting up with this madness as long as I did,” His nose wrinkled and he spent a few minutes rubbing grit from his eyes before he found the courage to speak again. “Part of me hopes it is you… So I can tell you what an enormous prat you are even in the afterlife,” He hummed again tapping his fingers rhythmically on the table top glancing toward the door wondering why Mrs. Hudson hadn’t appeared yet. How long, exactly, did it take to find a duster and a bit of aerosol spray? “Mrs. Hudson, is everything all right?”

There was no answer.

A cold prickle slid up John’s spine; “Mrs. Hudson?” He climbed carefully to his feet and went to the door, peering down the stair but he couldn’t even so much as hear her radio or the click of her shoes as she moved about. There was nothing… not even the sound of the street.

“Mrs. Hudson?” He jogged down the steps, swung around the banister and approached the door to her flat. It was standing open, the telly was on but there was no picture, no sound. Just a flat grey glow from the screen. Strange…

Even stranger still, the landlady wasn’t in her flat and the rear door was locked. John peered out in case she’d stepped out to have a moment but there was no one in the back and she wasn’t just putting something out for the dustmen.

Carefully, unnerved by the complete lack of sound all around him… The stair didn’t even squeak when he put his foot on it, he continued up and stood a moment at the open door to the flat, peering in curiously. “Mrs. Hudson?”

He took a step in and looked left and right then stepped back into the kitchen and stared down at the table top with his heart thudding in his throat. His phone was right where he’d left it, his keys as well, but Sherlock’s phone was gone.

“Now, I know for a fact I left it right there,” He pressed his fingertip to the spot for emphasis and tried to ignore the growing itch at the back of his neck. “Where’s it gone?” He took a deep breath and turned toward the front windows, shoulders squared, back straight—ready for anything… and there was Sherlock’s phone, right where he’d placed it after the funeral, as if it had never been moved—complete with a thin layer of dust.

John sighed and strode over bending to pick it up and with his fingers just half a breadth away it lit up, brightly—blindingly bright and behind him on the table his own phone chimed an incoming text.

John jerked upright, finding himself staring wide eyed—unnerved because in that instant all the sound had rushed back into the world and Mrs. Hudson was chatting quietly at him as she came up the stairs.

“—Really a lovely girl, ‘Livia… She’s very pretty—a bit eccentric, but you’re rather fond of that type aren’t you,” She stopped in the doorway and stared at John curiously, a wash pail over her arm containing various spray bottles of cleaner and a disposable duster. “John, Dear… Are you all right?”

His fingers curled, and he glanced down at the dust free rectangle where Sherlock’s phone had been, just a moment ago, then into the kitchen where his own and Sherlock’s were sitting at angles to one another as if it had never been moved.

_This isn’t right,_ John swallowed with a measure of difficulty. _This is not good. Not good in the slightest!_

“Perhaps you should sit down, Dear… I’ll put the kettle on.”

John stumbled back to the kitchen and dropped into his chair, face leaned exhaustedly into his hands.

Mrs. Hudson bustled about the kitchen around him as quietly as she could and a few minutes later John looked up from staring at Sherlock’s phone, dark and lifeless lying there beside his own and took the cup of tea she offered him, whispering his thanks while she sat to work swiping the dust from every surface in the sitting room.

John felt the shivers and that pressure on the back of his neck slowly ease and after he’d finished as much of his tea as he could stomach he plucked up his phone and engaged the directory, intending to call Greg back and apologize… But when the screen came to life there was a text notification blinking in the middle of the screen.

He didn’t mean to click it, he’d intended to bypass it completely, probably even delete it without reading it, but it seemed to access on its own.

It was a photograph, a photograph taken upward and John could see himself at a very unflattering angle, like a few photos he’d taken with that old thirty-five millimetre camera of his mother’s years and years ago. Photos taken as he’d reached for the thing where it had been lying on his mother’s dressing table and accidentally pressed the shutter release as he’d closed his hand on it. This one was similar, similar because he could see up his own sleeve, see his face between his fingers—his expression grim and curious and slightly nauseated… But across from him, gripping his shoulders, mouth open—face flushed as if he’d been shouting at the top of his voice was Sherlock. His nostrils were flared and John could see the roof of his mouth, could see up the hem of his t-shirt, that ridiculous silk dressing gown hanging off one shoulder and his fingers were clutching as if trying to sink his nails into John’s shoulders.

John couldn’t believe what he was seeing, couldn’t understand it because in the photo he was wearing the same exact outfit he was at that moment.

Mrs. Hudson gave a startled cry and jerked around when John seemed to just lunge backward from the table, his phone clattering across the floor between his feet, chair screeching on the floor. John’s eyes were wide, his face pale expression similar to one who could at any second become violently ill. She followed him quickly as he fled the flat and was able to catch one shoulder as he was halfway down the stairs, “John—Doctor Watson, what’s happened?”

He shook his head back and forth mouth opening and closing but he couldn’t make a single sound come out and realizing it bled the last of his strength away and he dropped to sit against the wall with his head hidden in his folded arms and his knees drawn to his chest.

Mrs. Hudson didn’t know exactly what to do so she patted his back and spoke softly; “Stay right there, I’ll be back in just a moment,” She went up the stairs as fast as she could and retrieved John’s phone from under the table, blinking curiously because that pink one Sherlock had liked so much was lying on the table top and had lit up such a peculiar shade of blue… Like the sky just before you could see the stars in the evening and a little white blur of a thing was moving frantically back and forth on the screen. She stared at it hypnotized for a moment then shook her head and went back out to John. They sat there together—dusting be damned—until ‘Livia arrived thirty minutes later.

Livia Painter was just barely taller than John with hair she’d dyed very black and cut off severely straight at her shoulders. She hefted a carpet bag up the stairs with her Mrs. Hudson trailing behind clutching a tissue to her lips because she was frightened of that photo John had shown her on his phone. Even more so when on the stair ‘Livia stopped to greet John and all he’d done was pass the phone up to her and say in a deep steady voice; “Make it go away…”

Livia stared wide eyed and grinning at the image and darted up the stairs, chattering happily with herself as she lined candles along every available surface and turned out all the lights.

John didn’t want to go back in there… ever. But he made himself, he said firmly in his head; ‘It’s not Sherlock… Whatever is in there is NOT Sherlock. Sherlock is dead, he’s gone. IT is NOT him!’

Livia had pushed back the furniture in the middle of the sitting room, and had three or four containers of table salt sitting at the ready beside her bag. She had one container open in her right hand, and a little book in her left and was spilling the salt in a large rather lopsided ring in the middle of the sitting room floor. She was humming as she did it, passing back and forth to collect things from her bag and to inquire as to which phone was ‘HIS’. She took the pink one when she retreated again and sat it in the middle of the floor then continued making patterns of salt symbols and shapes until John felt like he was living a bad exorcism film.

Livia went along the whole flat and laid down a line of salt at each window, then one at the front door, then—book in hand—lit a bundle of dried leaves with a match and went through each room in turn wafting the noxious smoke before her with a large feather and chanting.

And that’s when John realized something was wrong.

His ears were ringing… more than the usual tinnitus he experienced late at night or when it was quiet. More so than after gunshots, bomb blasts, or when he’d been in shock or concussed. It was like someone was standing behind him running a wet finger round and round the rim of a wine glass… like there was a whole room of people doing it at just slightly different pitches.

John Watson felt very tired, nauseated and that pressure on the back of his neck was back worse than ever… chewing and squeezing with wide ethereal jaws.

“What are you doing? God, what is that SMELL! Stop it! What the HELL are you doing with that, put it down! This is insanity, who are you and what are you doing in my flat! I’m under quarantine you insipid school girl, I’ve Dengue Fever and I’m highly contagious—John, JOHN!! Get this mediocre faith healer out of my sight! I refuse to be treated by someone whose certification came from a website affiliated with Google!”

John’s eyes flew open and every muscle in his body clamped up as if he were having an epileptic fit.

Livia was going through the sitting room wafting that—he didn’t know what it was—and following her, quite closely, berating her with insults and waving his thin arms about, was Sherlock.

He was extremely pale, and his hair was flattened to his head on one side as if he’d fallen asleep with it wet and matted it against his pillow, or the sofa cushion, twice he grabbed at something off a shelf, a vase, a book, the fire poker and swung it at Livia, but the action never made contact, and even though John could see him bashing at her from behind with the object in all actuality it never moved from its place.

Sherlock snarled planted both feet square on top of the tea table and hefted the fire poker above him. He threw back his head and released an ear shattering battle cry and fell directly through Livia’s form as if he’d been trying to stab her like a Roman gladiator and landed on his knees in the middle of the salt circle, his version of the fire poker lodged deeply into the floor just a bare inch from his phone. He released a surprised little cry and snatched the phone up with a happy little; “Oh, there it is!” And sat, legs crossed, elbows on his knees, a great grin on his face and began tapping out a text. After a moment he smiled down at his handiwork and hit send… And beside him on the floor the phone lit up.

Livia stopped what she was doing, smiling—tossed the still smouldering leaves into the fire grate and took up her container of salt again, quickly laying out more symbols in her little… art project.

John couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think… Could only sit there and watch in stark horror as Livia took out an array of objects from her bag and began laying them out just beyond the outer rim of her circle.

Sherlock glanced up from his phone; “You’re cleaning this up. I refuse to be blamed for this—“ He sneered at the salt around him and didn’t even dignify what she was doing with a complete sentence just sent another quick text and ground his teeth, one hand to his head as if he had a migraine.

He climbed to his feet with a relieved sigh and jerked his fire poker from the floor brandishing it at her almost like a pirate with a cutlass.

“I must warn you… I took fencing lessons as a child. I’m actually quite good and if you refuse to leave once more I’ll be forced to—“

Livia sat her salt aside, finished with whatever she was doing and propped her fists on her hips proudly.

Sherlock gave a shiver and blinked curiously around at him. “This is familiar… Where have I seen this before,” He strode over near Livia and stared down at her imperiously, reading what was in her book upside down; “Banishment of Unwanted Malicious Entities?” He snorted; “Oh, so you’re having a séance… Wonderful, you’re deaf _and_ stupid.”

John’s phone chimed and he had to force himself to look away and pick up the device, hands shaking as he accessed the message—eyes widening when he read the words on the screen;

_Come home at once. There’s a strange woman in our flat burning sage. It smells horrendous. She made a mess of the sitting room. I’ve asked her to stop but she must be deaf because she has so far completely ignored my presence. She also seems to have the hardest skull ever on record, perhaps you can convince her to have X-rays to prove this hypothesis and I can compare them to a few of my own I have on hand. We are also out of milk and pot noodle. SH_

A few seconds later there was another text.

_Found my phone. Next time try not to hide it in such an obvious place. SH_

Sherlock was pacing now back and forth in front of the woman his phone pressed to his ear; “Come on Lestrade, pick up…” His face contorted into a snarl and he pulled his phone from his ear stomped violently and shouted; “GOD! I hate this network!” He punched in another number with his thumb and held the device to his ear. He began muttering to the woman and himself as he made increasingly small figure eights within the circle; “First Mrs. Hudson disappears, then John decides to ignore me… Lestrade won’t answer his phone. Mycroft even decides NOW of all times to stop making a nuisance of him-self… I haven’t had a case in WEEKS—and my brain has begun to stagnate because I can’t even think of something to say to MAKE YOU LEEEEEEEEEAAAAVE!” He shouted the last, bent close to Livia’s face where she’d raised onto her knees and was making hand gestures over the objects she’d laid out.

Sherlock made a miserable noise in his throat that quickly became a roar of frustration and turned around quickly, swinging his fire poker toward the mirror above the fire place, only for his arm, shoulder and the poker to collide with something mid-air and knock him sprawling.

He lie there for a moment panting, curled around his arm in a tight knot, and then slowly he sat up, eyes wide, and stared.

John’s heart was in his throat.

Sherlock blinked, head cocked to the side and rocked to his feet still holding his arm awkwardly to his chest, fire poker forgotten, phone still clutched in his hand. He took three hesitant steps toward the edge of the circle, raised his uninjured hand and knocked his knuckles against the air… The salt on the floor shifted a few grains but the circle held.

Sherlock’s breath began to quicken and he ran his fingertips along the invisible barrier, walking the complete circumference of the circle in awe. He swallowed, then in a quick move, shoved his phone between his teeth, took two steps back and performed a hard shoulder height kick that shifted a few more salt grains on the floor, but didn’t seem to in any way weaken whatever barrier he was interacting with. He stood there with his eyebrows drawn down irritably, pulled his phone from between his teeth again and spoke more to himself than anyone else; “What in God’s name…” He lifted his leg and kicked again, as if trying to take down a door—John had seen him do that once, and it was an impressive sight. This just made him stumble back as if he’d merely slammed his heel against a brick wall. He stood there for a minute, expression cool, then bent and retrieved his fire poker and struck at the barrier with all his might.

Nothing happened. John imagined he could hear a chipping sound, like when he’d taken a snow shovel to ice on the stoop the year before, but aside from a few more grains of salt shifting there was no change.

John blinked stupidly and turned to look at Mrs. Hudson, who was watching Livia intently, but seemed completely blind to Sherlock’s antics within the circle.

“Do you see this?” John whispered to her, motioning at it.

Mrs. Hudson turned and patted his hand; “Yes, Dear, Livia’s calling forth the White Forces to banish the Dark Spirit… She’ll be finished in a few minutes… I just hope it works.”

“Banish the Dark Spirit? Banish it where?”

Livia didn’t turn just spoke lightly, airily to the room in general; “Back to hell where it belongs.”

John found himself suddenly on his feet; “You can’t be serious! LOOK AT HIM!”

Livia blinked, hands still raised, and turned to John; “Look at what? It’s just energy, Dr. Watson… Just malicious energy, it doesn’t have a form that can be seen.”

“The hell it doesn’t!” John took a step back, fiddled with his phone for a moment and held it steady staring in shock because through the lens the circle looked completely empty. He snapped the photo anyway and stared at it. “No… Hold on,” He did it again… with the same result. And again and again but there was nothing.

Sherlock was panting now, holding tightly to his arm and the matted bits of his hair were wet and leaving dark little drips on his dressing gown and the floor. A black trail of it was running down the side of his face. He eased himself down to his knees in the floor and tapped out a quick message with his thumb and hit send.

The pink phone lit up… But John didn’t get the text.

John felt his hackles rise because something looked wrong with Sherlock, he seemed thinner… not bodily thinner, but almost as if he were fading into transparency.

What have I done… Oh, Jesus, what is she doing to him!

“Stop,” John bent forward and tried to grab Livia’s wrist; “You have to stop right this moment.”

Livia stared at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. “What are you talking about, I’ve actually caught something! I’m not letting it go! It could be a demon or something worse, I’m not letting it go!”

“Livia, you HAVE TO stop, you’re hurting him!”

She pulled her arm away; “It’s evil energy, Dr. Watson, you can’t hurt it, but it can hurt you…” She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a rosary, pushing it into John’s hand; “There, that’ll protect you… Just get back and let me finish—“

John blinked down at the beads, then up at the girl; “No… Take your beads, take your—“ He flapped his hand at the array of objects she had spread out before her. “Whatever the hell that is, and get OUT.”

Livia scowled, picked up a small plastic spritzer bottle and politely spritzed John in the face twice.

He blinked, took a deep breath and slowly wiped the water away from his eyes and mouth; “Right… You’re leaving, now.”

“This is Holy Water… Do you know what that does to evil spirits?”

“Yeah, the same thing it does to cats…” John nudged her bag toward her with his toe and crossed his arms over his chest.

Livia looked positively mortified and mumbled to herself as she shoved her things back into her bag.

Mrs. Hudson looked confused and pulled at John’s sleeve; “What’s happened? What is it?”

He shook his head and held up a finger, asking her for just a moment to collect his thoughts, as he watched Livia stomp down the stairs and to the front door. She jerked it open stormed out and slammed it loudly behind her.

John took another deep breath and sat heavily down in a kitchen chair. His hands shook as he lifted his phone to his ear, eyes trained like lasers on Sherlock as he dialled Greg’s number.

Mrs. Hudson shook her head disappointedly and went for the broom, striding forward to begin sweeping up the salt, but John made a noise in his throat and covered the mouth piece of his phone to speak to her; “Leave it… Just for a bit, I’ll—I’ll clean it up.”

She rolled her eyes and leaned the broom in the corner then called over her shoulder as she descended; “I’ll make something for supper… You look ready to faint… I do hope sandwiches are alright, I haven’t done my shopping.”

Greg answered after the twelfth ring and offered an apology that he’d been in the bath.

“How quickly can you get dressed?”

Greg snorted; “Why?”

“I need you to go to that psychic… Jade… I need you to tell her that I… I need her expertise on something. Have her call me.”

“You want me to hit up a psychic for you, at ten thirty at night—“

“Please, Greg… Please.”

Greg grumbled and John heard the drawers shifting as he dressed; “I should be paid for this madness… The woman’s not all she’s cracked up to be, John. I promise you that… Nothing like the ones on telly.”

“If you’d just witnessed what I had, Greg, you’d bite your tongue.”

“Right… I’ll call when I get there.”

John said his goodbyes and sat there shaking for a long while, sweat rolling off his brow just staring at Sherlock where he was half collapsed against the boundary of the circle, holding his arm, blood dripping down the side of his head.

John folded his hands together and didn’t dare move or speak lest whatever was causing him to SEE Sherlock whatever spell had been cast, be broken.

Mrs. Hudson appeared a few moments later, talking mid-sentence but John didn’t hear what she was saying, he only truly noticed her presence when she laid a hand on his shoulder. He jerked in surprise and tore his eyes away to look at her.

Her gaze was penetrating, a little frightened; “You can see something… can’t you… In that circle—That’s why you didn’t want me to sweep it up.”

John swallowed hard but couldn’t make himself say anything.

Mrs. Hudson held a finger to her own lips and displayed her hand to him in a way that said he didn’t have to say it. “Tell me one thing, that’s all I ask…” She hesitated, folded her hands tightly in her lap and leaned on them to stop their shaking; “Livia explained it to us at Mrs. Turner’s that when you catch something in a circle like that, made of salt not chalk, that when it gets close the edges, it can’t hide what it really is any longer. It’s the salt and the spell, you see… Is that true? Can you see what—Is it a bad thing?”

John shook his head and a shiver went through him.

Mrs. Hudson clapped a hand to her throat and turned slowly to look at the circle from the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t see anything in it at all. She stood carefully and approached, standing a good distance away from it she bent slightly at the waist and spoke loudly as if the circles of salt were physical barriers like walls between herself and whatever was in there. “If you’re a good spirit we’ll let you out! I don’t actually mind having a good spirit about… Livens the place up a bit since the doctor here has gone… But if you’re a bad one, I’ll leave you there until this building falls in on itself! I’d be out a flat to rent but it would serve you right for playing such nasty mean tricks!” And she disappeared down stairs.

Sherlock’s head cocked to the side halfway through her sentence and his lips moved without sound, forming her name… As if perhaps, he could almost hear her.

John watched him for a long while, it could have been hours, but Sherlock barely moved, knees drawn up, injured arm to his chest, head tilted onto his shoulder, leaving a gory wet stain on his dressing gown. John wasn’t aware when it happened, only that one minute everything was still, and the next Sherlock was speaking, low and hushed—just to himself and John could feel his heart slowly tearing out of his chest.

“I don’t know what’s happening… Everything was fine, and then… What did I do? I must have done something—I always do something,” He shoved his hair off his forehead and swiped his hand on his shirt. “Where are you, John? Whatever I did, whatever I said, I’ll take it back. Just please… please stop it. Make this stop.”

John took a shuddering breath and—on a whim—turned his phone off. With shaking hands he removed the battery, laid it aside and punched in Sherlock’s number, trying to push everything he had into it.

At first nothing happened and John ground his teeth, squeezing his eyes closed and PUSHING focusing on everything that made him who he was and trying to just… just make SOMETHING happen.

His phone didn’t react, and the one lying on the ground beside Sherlock remained unresponsive… But the one in Sherlock’s hand—the one that he’d picked up without actually picking up the phone, buzzed.

Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat and he blinked tiredly at the phone then pressed it to his ear.

John heard nothing, but he spoke anyway. He knew he looked absolutely foolish, but he couldn’t stop himself. He needed it more than anything in that moment. More than air, more than the beat of his own heart, he needed Sherlock to hear him.

“I can see you, Sherlock…”

0-0-0

0-0-0


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock’s breath punched out of his chest and he curled in on himself holding tightly to his phone as if at any moment solar flares may wipe the signal out again, indefinitely this time.

“John?”

“I can see you… You’re not alone—Something… something’s happened, and I can’t be there right now, but I just need you to know you’re not alone. I’m here. Everything’ll be OK.”

“I’m sick, John… I-I think I’m dying…” He chuckled and the sound was in no way amusing. “My head won’t stop—I’ve never had a migraine this bad before—Maybe it’s a brain tumour. And I-I think I broke my arm a bit ago.”

“It’s alright,” John swallowed and his mouth felt so dry. “Just don’t move it. Lie down somewhere and try to stay still, don’t waste your energy.”

“You’re speech pattern is altered. You’re under duress— John, I can’t think… I can’t think.”

“It’s alright.”

“Stop saying that… I know it isn’t alright, you know it isn’t alright, you’re being predictable and stupid. Don’t be stupid.”

John could feel his eyes watering and the corner of his mouth twitched upward. As he watched, more blood was streaming from the side of Sherlock’s head and his right arm most definitely looked broken now… More than that, his right leg wasn’t lying exactly straight any longer.

_He’s wasting energy, that circle’s got him isolated, like he’s wasting his air…_

“Sherlock… I have to end the call now, but I want you to do something for me… I’m still going to be able to hear you, even if you can’t hear me—“

“Mycroft’s bugged the flat again hasn’t he— I knew I hadn’t found them all!”

“Well, that’s a good thing right now, it means I can hear and see you… So just—just stay where you are, try to rest. You can talk to me if you want—In fact I’d like it if you did, but if you feel tired, just lie there, OK?”

“What’s happening? Was there a bomb? Is it radiation?”

“No. There was an… an accident. I’m fine though, so don’t worry, but it means I have to stay away for a bit. As soon as we can get it worked out I’ll be home, I promise.”

Sherlock nodded; “I thought you were angry with me, and I couldn’t remember what I’d done to make you angry enough to ignore my existence… And then that woman showed up.”

“You didn’t do anything, Sherlock… It—It was me. I doubted you… it was my fault.”

“You doubted me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that was stupid.”

John chuckled and he could just barely see Sherlock’s lips curl up in just the faintest grin he’d ever seen. “Stay where you are… I’ll be there soon,” He hesitated, then lowered the phone back to the table top and buried his face in his hands.

0-0-0

John didn’t dare disturb the circle, but he did drag the seat cushions off the sofa and put them as close to it as he could to lie down on, arms folded under his head, just watching Sherlock where he had laid over on the ground, looking entirely too uncomfortable considering John was sure he didn’t have a physical presence at the moment. He fought the urge to doze off and twice woke himself with a shake and found Sherlock was squinting in his direction. He imagined that perhaps if he were to stay still enough, for long enough out here Sherlock would see him.

And then his phone started ringing, he let out a sigh of relief and answered it, still lying there staring at Sherlock and wondering what might happen if he just… just swept the circle up.

“Hullo?”

“Mr. Watson?” Iris Jade sounded half asleep. “Sorry to call at this hour, but your friend said you were having an emergency.”

John snorted, God that was the understatement of the century. “Yeah, you could say that… I’ve just had a girl here trying to banish the unwanted spirit… Turns out he’s not so unwanted after all.”

“Oh?”

John rubbed his face and rolled onto his back; “She laid out this big salt circle in the sitting room floor, around the phone and started chanting all this nonsense about sending him back to hell where he belonged—“

“Well that was rude,” Iris Jade snorted and John heard her take a sip of some drink, he liked to imagine it was tea, but it was probably something else considering the late hour. “You never want to send an unidentified spirit straight to the netherworld, you start small, offer the light and ask politely for the spirit to leave you alone, and if that doesn’t work, then you CLEANSE the place, you don’t banish… God, how ignorant can people be.”

John swallowed; “Yeah, well… She put down this circle and suddenly I-I can see him,” He rubbed his face, “Like actually see him.”

Iris Jade was quiet for a minute; “You’re putting me on.”

“No… He’s sitting there in the circle plain as day, with b-blood on his face…”

“It’s not just taking his shape to confuse you?”

“How can you tell if it is or not?”

“Holy Water… Splash some holy water and demand in the name of Christ, The Father and the Holy Ghost that it if it is a malicious spirit it be gone from your home and never return… If it’s not malicious—if it really is… him, he won’t be affected.”

“I don’t have any Holy Water…”

“Do you have a crucifix or a rosary?”

John snorted; “One of those little plastic sets they give out at Easter.”

“That’s just as good… Hold it in your fist, outward over the circle—don’t cross the lines though—and demand the same. Put your heart into it.”

John felt absolutely absurd, but picked up the strand of beads Livia had thrust at him—she must have dropped them as she left—and wound them around his fist, then sat up closed his eyes and called out in a firm voice. He expected something to happen because he could never be fortunate enough to be stuck with Sherlock’s spirit… But Sherlock didn’t even so much as react.

“Nope,” John dropped his fist to his side and breathed a little easier, a strange giddy feeling in his chest; “Still there.”

“Oh, alright… that complicates things.”

“How does the fact he’s still there complicate things?” He felt… felt almost happy.

“Well, then it could either be a residual echo of him in the space—Does he interact with things around him, or does he just seem to wander around doing things he normally did.”

John rubbed his face; “He was shouting insults at the girl who was hear earlier… So, yeah, he’s aware of his surroundings, at least partially… He can’t see Mrs. Hudson and he only notices me when I’m intentionally trying to be noticed or half asleep…”

“That makes sense, the veil between the worlds is thinnest in those moments between wakefulness and sleep. You must have just—just figured out how to see it while awake,” Iris Jade went quiet for a bit, then spoke in hushed tones to who John was willing to bet was Greg. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it didn’t matter.

“Doctor Watson… Was his death—sudden?”

John swallowed, “Depends on your definition of sudden… He flung himself from a rooftop… It’s likely he was alive for about a minute after he hit…”

“Then, it’s quite possible he’s not aware that he’s dead… His spirit could have lingered here… If that’s true he needs to move on… and soon. A soul trapped on the corporeal plane without a body to shield it can be corrupted, influenced and damaged by the things around it… He needs to move on.”

John felt his throat tightening. Move on? So all that mumbo jumbo from Church was real? There really was an afterlife?

“What is there after this? For him.”

“I don’t know… Nobody does. But he can’t stay here, it’s not right… He needs to go.”

John swallowed and choked back the burn in his sinuses. “What if I don’t want him to…”

Iris Jade sighed, a kind sad sound; “John… You care for him very much, don’t you… I want you to look at him. He’s in pain here, like a raw nerve exposed to the elements… There’s nothing there to protect him—and as good as your intentions are, as much as you’re thinking that you can protect him, you can’t. I don’t know what’s out there after this, but I know there’s something. Whether it’s ‘Heaven’ or just a big long, peaceful sleep I don’t know… I like to think we all return to the Whole… Like we’re all pieces of a quilt and when we die we go back together and are ONE with everyone we love. If he stays here, John, he’ll never have that peace, and neither will you for denying him that… You’ll torture yourself to death worrying… Please, John… If you loved him at all, you have to let him go.”

John felt himself choking and he couldn’t stop it, just bowed over his knees and let it happen.

Iris Jade was quiet for a long time, long enough that John’s nose clogged and when he lifted his head the sleeves of his jumper were wet, but he knew she was right, as much as it hurt she was right.

“What do I do? How—How do I get him out of this circle?”

He took a photograph of it when Iris Jade asked and sent it to her, then waited while she inspected it and called him back with instructions on how to deconstruct it without causing Sherlock harm, or letting anything unwanted into the flat. He filled a tea mug with a bit of scotch he had in the fridge, a saucer with a bit of water, some salt on another saucer, plucked some of the half burned candles Livia had left lying about and placed them in a slightly curving line in the floor in front of him. A kitchen knife became his ‘athame’ and a mixing bowl from the cupboard a cauldron. One of Sherlock’s old cigarettes he’d found in a squashed pack in the slipper on the mantle the representation of fire and air.

He did everything Iris Jade told him to, whispered words that felt strange on his tongue like a battery, then one by one, seemingly at random but Iris Jade insisted it was systematic, smudged out the symbols surrounding the circle.

Sherlock fidgeted uncomfortably then scowled severely and rocked quickly into a sitting position, plucked up his fire poker and waved it around as he stared hatefully at the perimeter of his little ‘cell’.

“I can hear you!” He said loudly, his face contorted in rage; “I know you’re—“ And then he went absolutely quiet and stared right down the length of his fire poker at John’s face, recognition like a light behind his eyes.

“He’s still contained,” Iris Jade said in a quiet voice; “But he should be able to see you now, or at least know you’re there… This way, if it IS just a malicious entity wearing his shape you’ll know and it won’t be very hard to get rid of it, but if it is him, just swiping your hand through the circle will release him.”

John barely heard her. Sherlock was crouching down, his face wrinkled up in something akin to disgust, and he was still pointing the fire poker at John’s nose.

Even if John knew it wouldn’t hurt him, he still flinched back from it a little.

“Something’s different… You weren’t there a moment ago… I’m having a dream, aren’t I. My mind has deteriorated to the point that my subconscious has to speak to me in code,” He sighed and lowered his fire poker across his knees, left hand arranging his injured right across his lap. “Wonderful…” He wiped a hand over his face, smearing blood, and regarded John with a bored expression. “Right, you look to have been crying, and you’re holding your phone to your ear with your right hand—so you were doing something and talking to this person in the same moment… You’re also attempting an approximation of the disaster That GIRL was creating earlier; ‘Banishing Unwanted Malicious Sprits’. This ritual must symbolize faith—Religion… Weak minds flocking together like pigeons to insinuate their own ideas of self-importance on others by insisting they have ‘souls’ that will live forever—“

“Sherlock…”

Sherlock sighed mightily and rolled his eyes; “I don’t have time for this fruitless introspection… I am sick, I want John and John isn’t here. That’s what this means. Nothing more… Christ but if my head would just STOP spinning I might be able to THINK.”

John took a slow deep breath and spoke, focusing all his energy into pushing the words forward and making them stick; “Sherlock… I need you to hear me and I need you to actually SEE what’s around you not what’s in your head. I need you to look and SEE.”

Sherlock groaned and flopped backward miserably; “John, I want to wake up. I don’t have time for this, it means NOTHING. If you were really there I might be compelled to listen, but this is a dream! A useless unconscious series of firing synapses jumbling together into something that appears to have purpose and meaning when in all actuality it is nothing more than the equivalent of static cling in your jumpers when you take them out of the dryer. I want you here to fix whatever’s the matter with me, therefore I dream of you performing arcane pagan rituals in our sitting room, it means NOTHING.”

“Then wake up… If you want to wake up so badly, then wake up! See what’s really going on!”

“If I could, then I would—“

“And why can’t you?”

“I am sick, John, my mind is overheated I’m dehydrated and feverish and YOU won’t come when I call you—I’ve probably slipped into a coma!”

“You’re not in a coma. You’re not sick… You don’t bleed randomly from the head if you’re sick, you don’t break your arm in five places swinging a fire poker.”

Sherlock was quiet, staring at him now in something akin to annoyance, but there was something darker in his gaze, something just a little bit frightened, as if he knew what John was saying was right, but couldn’t let himself believe it because then that would mean something else was wrong, something he couldn’t comprehend—couldn’t let himself believe.

It was the same expression that had been on his face in Dartmoor and John felt disturbed and sick because he was glad. He was glad Sherlock was afraid because he was afraid too.

“You know what happened… You know, every time I dream about you, you say it. You look at me like that and you ask why I didn’t come when you needed me. You beg me; ‘Please,’ you say, ‘Please, John, don’t let me fall.’”

John’s voice cracked and he bowed his head, letting his phone fall to the ground and skid outward from him. He covered his face and drew his knees up, kicking over the mug of scotch and the saucer and making a mess in the floor, but he didn’t care. Christ, he didn’t care anymore.

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, but when he lifted his head Sherlock was gone, and a frantic look about the sitting room showed John one thing, his phone had skidded right through the salt circle, smearing it and the spilled scotch and water had dissolved some of the salt away.

John cursed bitterly, wiped his face and picked up his phone… The battery was completely dead.

“Just perfect,” He shoved it into his pocket and stood there with his face turned to the ceiling for a few moments breathing, then went to the corner, took up the broom and started cleaning up the mess.

0-0-0

0-0-0


	7. Chapter 7

_Why can’t you wake up?_

_You’re not in a coma. You’re not sick… You don’t bleed randomly from the head if you’re sick, you don’t break your arm in five places swinging a fire poker._

_You know what happened… You know, every time I dream about you, you say it. You look at me like that and you ask why I didn’t come when you needed me. You beg me; ‘Please,’ you say, ‘Please, John, don’t let me fall.’_

**_You’re dead, Sherlock Holmes… I saw you fall four stories and smash yourself like an egg on the pavement. You’re dead…_ **

Sherlock hadn’t been sure what he’d heard until he realized the voice had been coming through his phone, not through John’s mouth… but it had definitely been John’s voice.

Dead?

He was dead?

And then John had bowed his head and something, some little square black something had broken whatever barrier had prevented him from leaving this exact spot in the sitting room, and Sherlock felt himself drawn out through a palm sized hole—sucked like water down the drain, spun and battered and spilled out into an immensity that was the flat. He scratched and clawed as he was pulled away, finding strength somewhere along the way and was able to keep himself together. Keep himself from being blasted apart into nothing by the shattering PAIN in his head.

For a while there was nothing, quiet… Every so often a hum of someone’s voice—a familiar voice… It was cold here, heavy… Wherever he was in that moment held more weight than the flat and the pain in his head and body was dull but more substantial than it was elsewhere.

It was a comforting weight, familiar, and something told him he should know where he was, and who was speaking so quietly, rhythmically, touching his left hand, but he couldn’t. Even those soft sounds of movement, clicking and beeping, meant next to nothing, as soon as he found he had enough strength he withdrew and found himself standing in the flat… And something was different.

He could hear sound outside the window and when he peered out, over the line of salt still on the window sill, he could see people moving by on the street and the odd car. The world had colour and smell but Sherlock felt so light—thin.

The furniture had been moved, his chair wasn’t in the same spot it had been before, and John’s was at a slightly steeper angle. There was also a noise from the kitchen and when he went to investigate noticed the kettle was on and light steam was escaping from the spout.

There was a mug at the ready… but only one.

_Because I’m dead…_

He wanted to shiver, felt the need for a chill to run up his spine, but it didn’t happen. He turned and walked slowly toward John’s room, finding the door open and the smaller man sitting on his bed staring down at his phone, a photo—a rather bad photo in Sherlock’s opinion, but a photo none the less.

John lifted his head but didn’t turn around and when he spoke he did so in a whisper. “I know you’re there… I-I can feel you.”

“John?”

He turned quickly, eyes wide, and stared in something like relief; “Oh… I-I thought…” He took a slow breath and let it out, looking Sherlock up and down for any imperfection, but aside from the rumpled appearance of his dressing gown and how wild his hair looked, he seemed unruffled. There was no blood, his arm and leg had mended spontaneously. The only indication that something wasn’t right was the fact Sherlock cast no shadow on the floor and no reflection in the mirror.

“So, you’re just in my head then?” John turned back to his phone and clicked away from the photo, hiding it back in his pocket; “That’s fine… It’s all fine,” He snuffed heavily and shook his head as if to clear it. “Just take some getting used to—being insane.”

“I’m dead…”

John hesitated, rubbed his face and looked up into the corner; “Yeah… Jumping from rooftops can do that… Kill you, I mean.”

“I don’t remember that… The dying I mean… I-I remember falling and not much after until I woke up in the floor there,” He motioned into the sitting room, in front of the sofa.

“What are you, Sherlock… Are you a figment of my imagination, my subconscious trying to compensate for my missing you or are you a—“ He couldn’t make himself finish the sentence. Couldn’t make himself say it.

“I think I’d rather be a figment of your imagination truthfully… At least then you could honestly say you’ve got a bit of sense in you.”

John snorted and had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing.

Sherlock offered a small, unsure little grin.

Then after a moment John let his breath out and rubbed his palms on his trouser legs, “Just try not to get me into trouble and I won’t imagine you away again.”

Silence hung in the air between them and then Sherlock spoke again, quietly; “I’m not exactly in love with the idea of being dead, John… Corpses are dead— I—I know it’s irrational, but I don’t want to be a corpse.”

“You’re not… You were a corpse three months ago, you’re not a corpse anymore. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh… Right, there’s that at least…” He shifted on his feet and rubbed at his arms as if chilled; “So, Mycroft hasn’t actually bugged the flat?”

“No… I haven’t seen hair-nor-hide of him since before the funeral.”

“Was it a nice funeral?”

“Not really, no… There were reporters and paparazzi outside and it was a big horrible mess… Closed casket though… I’ll have to thank your brother for that.”

“Oh, so it… it was bad then… Me, I mean.”

John snorted; “You fell four stories onto your head, Sherlock… Yes, it was bad.”

“Are you going to make me leave, John?” He hesitated, “I will if that’s what’s best, but I—I don’t know how.”

“You should leave… Iris Jade said it would harm you if you stayed… But I—I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want you to stay…” He wiped a hand over his face. “I’ve sat awake and prayed you were faking… I begged God, Please—please let him be alive somewhere. If he were to come back right now and tell me it had all been an act I’d forgive him. I wouldn’t even punch him for it,” He turned and looked at Sherlock with a broken expression of longing on his face then glanced away, “Guess it’s good to know not to waste my breath any longer.”

“I’m sorry, John… I’m… I am.”

John flipped a hand dismissively, “I left the salt up around the doors and windows, so you’re safe in the flat here… Problem is Iris Jade told me you can’t exactly get OUT of the flat with the salt up.”

Sherlock nodded. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go anywhere anyway. Maybe to that damned reporter’s flat and muck about there to torture her, or maybe—some morbid part of him anyway—to the cemetery to see his grave, just to make it final in his mind. Another part of him wondered if there were any others stuck like he was. Imagine the murders he could solve in this condition! The ANSWERS he could find!

It sent a tingle up from his toes and for a moment the flat faded out around him and he was back in that heavy place and there was something pricking at his toes a distant pale shape and sounds he couldn’t quite identify murmured back and forth. He shook his head and was back in John’s room.

John was tying his shoes; “I’m going to go collect a few things from my… from…” He shook his head; “I put your phone on to charge, so you can…” He made a rolling motion with his hand, “Draw energy from it, I guess. If you can still manage it you can text me… I actually got the last two you sent,” He opened the file and stared, shaking his head because the whole idea of receiving text messages from the dead was insane but there it was.

John watched as Sherlock turned and went back out to the sitting room and picked up the not-quite-solid version of his phone and collapsed on the sofa soundlessly; “Can I text Lestrade too? Or is it just you?”

“You can try, I just don’t know if it will work or not… Could be a laugh if it did though.”

Sherlock chuckled and the grin on his face was genuine and a little crooked. “Maybe I should try Anderson or Donovan… They’re just stupid enough to get it right but deny it because it’s ‘impossible’.”

“Well, have fun with that.”

Sherlock was quiet for a moment, his shoulders tense. “John… If I’m dead… could I call someone else who’s dead?”

“If you even so much as think the name Moriarty I’ll kill you a second time, Sherlock, NO.”

“Not who I had in mind actually… Though he is related.”

John hesitated in the doorway.

“I’m dead, there’s no changing that…” It hurt to say a little, so he pushed the feeling aside, “But I could— it could still be possible to clear Lestrade’s name… get him reinstated and clear yours as well… It would be a last laugh in my brother’s face to do it from beyond the grave.”

“You’re supposed to be enjoying the afterlife, Sherlock.”

“I am enjoying it…” He was scrolling through something, sitting there looking the same as he ever had.

John snorted and made himself leave. He’ll be here when I get back, he told himself as he stepped carefully over the salt line. He’s not going anywhere.

0-0-0

Three days later as John was coming in from shopping he noticed Sherlock sitting in his chair fiddling with his phone as he was almost constantly unless he was practically climbing the walls looking for stimulation. He’d twice now sat on the tea table and stared at John expectantly with some breed of malice in his eyes and outright demanded something to do because the afterlife was even more boring than religion made it out to be and if he didn’t find some type of stimulation soon he was going to start floating about like those horrible Sheet Ghosts you see on Halloween. “I’ll make a racket too,” He threatened. “Not a normal racket either, not moaning and groaning… I’ll scream and bang on the walls and—“

He’d snorted; “You screamed and banged on the walls when you were alive, no change there.”

John sighed and sat the shopping down in the sitting room, staring about at all manner of books and papers scattered around Sherlock where he was sitting oh-so-innocently and doing God knew what with his phone. John would have been upset had any of the papers been real, but as it was he just accepted that the not-quite-there versions of things Sherlock interacted with didn’t actually count as mess.

“John, I need you to take down that book on anatomy,” He pointed over his shoulder.

John saw roughly five versions of that same book lying open at Sherlock’s feet, but all the pages were blank.

“It appears that books I didn’t read before, I can’t read now unless they are physically open before me. Also, I’ve discovered I can turn the kettle on, but can’t turn it off… I think it’s burned itself out.”

John rushed into the kitchen, shopping forgotten by the door, and unplugged the unfortunate thing. “Is this what you did today? Went about trying to burn the flat down?”

Sherlock did not look amused; “It was an experiment.”

John was quiet for a moment, just staring at him fondly… sadly; “It always is,” He sighed and sat the ruined kettle aside; “Fine, what else did you do.”

“I managed to turn your torch on and off, I can turn the kettle on and I can make Mrs. Hudson’s television go on the blink, though I can’t tell her it was me… She only seems to hear me if she’s asleep and then she jumps awake and—well that’s the end of that. She’s called a repairman for the telly, do tell her there’s no need. Waste of money TV repairmen,” Then after a moment he lifted his head and spoke as John shuffled past to take down the book; “Oh, I successfully texted Lestrade… He’s on his way.”

John sighed and dropped the book with a loud clap onto the desk. “Why did you ask him to come?”

“I didn’t… You did.”

“I did!”

Sherlock smiled, poked a hand into his pocket and pulled out a copy of John’s phone. “I think I like being dead… Sort of. I didn’t even have to touch you… Just had to remember using your phone before and there it was.”

John sighed in a put-upon fashion and went to put away the shopping; “See if you can get that book open on your own.”

Sherlock made a rude hand gesture behind his back and John smirked while he began rifling through the bags he’d brought up.

“That salt line by the door is annoying I tried to go downstairs and ran right into it like a glass door. Get rid of it.”

John cocked his head as if he were thinking about it; “No.”

“It’s irritating I can’t even get near the windows, and how am I supposed to get Mrs. Hudson’s attention if I can’t go down stairs!”

“You told me a bit ago that you could put her TV on the blink… Just do that, I’ll tell her when it happens to come up and talk at you for a bit—“

“DULL!”

John shook his head, grinning; “Better than being up here alone—“

“How is that better? Look, just sweep it up and let me go out. I’ll have a better chance of finding the evidence if I’m allowed out, I won’t have to rely on you.”

“Are you saying I’m unreliable?”

“Don’t be stupid. I can go places you can’t now. I’m DEAD, I can’t be hurt with bullets or seen by Mycroft’s closed circuit cameras… I can go ANYWHERE and get information nobody else can. John, please if your little mind can manage it, try to actually appreciate this. I can still work. I could solve crimes there is no evidence for. Things I couldn’t have done before—I-I could solve the Ripper murders!” He smiled so widely it was nearly blinding and unnatural on his face. “I could do ANYTHING!”

“Right,” John said blandly, stowing his tea in the cupboard; “Which is exactly why that salt is staying in place… This isn’t carte blanche, Sherlock. This isn’t a good thing—in fact this isn’t even in the same universe as a good thing… You. Are. Dead… Understand?”

Sherlock wasn’t smiling, but there was still that unnervingly jubilant energy to him in the way his shoulders were slumped and his dressing gown was hanging off one shoulder. “Perfectly.”

John sighed and suppressed a shiver, then turned back to the cupboard.

“I spoke to someone else who is dead while you were out… It was uncomfortable and a complete waste of thirty minutes.”

“’Uncomfortable?’Coming from you, that’s saying something. Who was it?”

“Mrs. Turner’s mother. She died of a coronary—,” He was practically pouting; “But she’s just as irritating as her daughter… Kept asking me if I’d ‘Settled’ yet, and if you would tell her ‘Little Girl’ something so she could Go. And that stupid salt wouldn’t let me get far enough away from her that she got the hint her presence was unwanted—I even told her she was stupid and irritating and her very existance made me want to stab myself in the ear with a knitting needle and she kept going… Dead people are completely unable to hear what they do not want to hear.”

“Well, that’s not a very big change for you then. You never heard anything you didn’t want to,” John snorted, imagining Sherlock being unable to escape and chatted at by Mrs. Turner’s Mother’s ghost. His fingers slipped where he’d been getting a glass down for water and he nearly dropped it. He had to lean against the sink for a few minutes swallowing a burning ache in his throat and trying not to look at Sherlock. _No_ , he said to himself, eyes closed tightly; _I will not think that._

“—said that it was more difficult to GO if you had unfinished business, and I don’t see the importance of it but she seemed to—wouldn’t leave until I swore to tell you and I do NOT want her coming back so there, I’ve told you,” He cocked his head and stared at John; “Did you know you can’t lie when you’re dead… It’s very unsettling,” He steepled his fingers at his lips and slouched further; “I kept trying to tell her that you couldn’t see or talk to me and I couldn’t, it sounded like a complete and utter lie even to my own ears and I wound up admitting that you could… if what she said is true—which I doubt— successfully lying is something that darkens your soul—if you believe in such rubbish—“

John filled his glass and drained it, then went back into the sitting room to fetch more of the shopping and put it away.

Sherlock was quiet for a while, then got up and went to stand over the book John had opened for him. He stood there for a few moments then tried to turn the page—the not-quite-there page turned, revealing blank opposites, but Sherlock went back, bent close and took a deep long breath focusing minutely on the book itself.

John could feel his nerves prickling as the very air in the room seemed to become thicker suddenly, like it did before a lightning strike. He watched from the corner of his eye, pretending not to watch, as Sherlock managed to actually make the pages flutter—but they wouldn’t turn.

“Don’t look at me,” Sherlock said suddenly and thrust a finger in his direction, “This is difficult enough without being leered at.”

John turned back to his work, startled when he realized he’d been putting frozen peas into the cupboard. He pulled them out quickly and hesitantly pried open the freezer—Both had been cleared out and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“John.”

“Yes?”

“Page.”

“I’ll turn it in a moment.”

“No, John… The page.”

John turned and blinked curiously because Sherlock had one page pinched deliberately between forefinger and thumb and was lifting it with what appeared to be great effort… There was also a great bloody mess down the side of his face but he was continuing as if he didn’t notice.

John shivered and for a quick instant felt as if he may faint, then Sherlock’s fingers released the page and it fluttered down a strangely victorious expression on his face. “Right, now only a few hundred more to go before the cranial diagrams,” He rubbed his hands together, and pinched futilely at the next page half a dozen times before he managed to catch it.

John shuddered, strode quickly forward and took the book, “What are you looking for?”

Sherlock nodded peering down his nose at the pages while John turned them, trying to memorize them quickly so they would appear in his own version of the book. “I want to find out exactly how I died.”

John almost dropped the book. “Why?”

“It’s my death, I should know about it.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s morbid!”

“When has that ever stopped me? Morbidity is—“ He hesitated and blinked at John with a look of epiphany on his face; “—You don’t want to think about me being dead.”

He sighed and spoke on a hushed breath; “It’s a little late for that,” John propped the book open to the diagram of a human skull. “A few days ago you were terrified by the idea of being a corpse… Now you want to know how you died—in detail,” The tip of his tongue slashed over his lower lip; “Not just that, you’re treating it like a case. You’re going at it like it’s exciting and—and bloody well FUN and it isn’t. It wasn’t fun, Sherlock… You want to know how you died, just keep going like this and I’m pretty sure you’ll relieve it because that blood on your head?” His voice cracked and he found it next to impossible to continue.

Sherlock lifted his fingers and brushed along his hairline, gaze curious—and suddenly gleeful.

“No—Sherlock, NO,” John swiped a hand at him, as if intending to restrain him, but his fingers passed right through without even so much as a bit of resistance.

Sherlock gave a near violent spasm and leapt back—through the desk and stared at John with wide eyes.

John stared at his hand for a long moment silently.

Sherlock moved forward again—around the table this time— slowly and lifted a hand as if to touch John’s shoulder. He plucked at his shirt but an intangible version didn’t peel away, nor did John feel the contact. Sherlock’s face darkened and he plucked with more insistence.

John began to feel uncomfortable, as the force of Sherlock’s focus made the little hairs on his arms stand on end and his hackles rise. It was an unsettling sensation. “Sherlock, what are you do—“

“Quiet,” There was something wrong with his voice. It sounded strained and unnatural and his other hand came up to help—

John realized belatedly that Sherlock wasn’t trying to touch his shirt at all, but was trying to initiate contact… Sherlock was trying to touch him and couldn’t.

Suddenly his hand swiped violently forward and John felt a moment of mild panic when Sherlock’s arms made scissor like motions through his torso as if feeling for something in the dark. Sherlock’s eyes had gone impossibly wide and his lips were parted in confusion.

“What is it?”

Sherlock took half a step backward, hands drawn up toward his chin, gave his head a single shake of denial and with a gasp disappeared entirely.

John stopped himself lunging at the spot where Sherlock had been just an instant before, mouth opening to shout his name when suddenly papers stacked neatly on the desk began to flutter about madly and the microwave turned itself on and off on and off on and off.

“Sherlock? That—that’s enough! STOP!”

John had frequently thought Sherlock’s episodes of mad motion in the flat was like a hurricane, or a tornado or something similar, spinny and violent enough to either take your head off or leave you completely untouched with equal likelihood, he got a more than accurate portrayal of what he’d always thought in that moment and he stepped backward toward the window just in time because out of the wall where Sherlock had made that… strange smiling face with bullet holes, those bullets tore back through and collided with the mirror over the hearth sending shards of silvery glass flying.

He threw his arms up to protect his face and gave a short sharp cry; “JESUS!”

It was the breaking glass that did it, John was sure, suddenly everything stopped and he was left standing there with his arms drawn up defensively, staring around him while papers fluttered to the ground—and standing in the doorway looking shocked and horrified in front of a startled Mrs. Hudson, was Lestrade, his foot scuffed clean through the line of salt in the doorway.

John felt panic rise in his chest because without that salt Sherlock could go anywhere, he could be exposed to anything and corrupted or worse, lost completely.

0-0-0

Greg was on the sofa when John woke. He didn’t remember going to bed, didn’t remember when the mess in the sitting room had been cleaned up. What he did remember was vaguely unsettling. Seeing Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson in the doorway, that scuffed salt line and a feeling of mild panic as he’d tried to shove them away, shouting down the stairwell for Sherlock—

_“No—NO, please! Please, Sherlock, come back!”_

After that, not much at all… Though the back of his throat had a sickly sweet taste clinging to it and he felt pleasantly boneless and relaxed in a way that usually didn’t come after anything but a good shag or a good dose of Xanax. Seeing as how John hadn’t gotten a leg over in a good while, he had a feeling something had been in that cup of tea Mrs. Hudson had forced on him sitting there on the stairs.

Christ, and all the salt had been cleared away as well.

Greg looked up from what he was reading—John couldn’t identify it in his current state of not-quite-giving-a-shit. Thank you, Xanax.

“Right,” Greg said as means of a greeting. He said nothing else.

“Right,” John echoed and collapsed into his chair.

They remained thus for a long while. Long enough that Mrs. Hudson came up the stairs with a tray laden with sandwiches, biscuits and what looked like one of her herbal remedies. John had a sneaking suspicion that Lestrade was pointedly looking away from it.

“Drink this down, Dear,” She pushed the cup into John’s hands and handed a mug of tea to Lestrade, then delicately sat beside him on the sofa and pressed the hem of her skirt down over her knees.

John felt his upper lip roll back from his teeth in a snarl; “Did you drug this one too?”

Mrs. Hudson flinched and looked down, ashamed.

Lestrade squared his shoulders and gave John a steady glare.

John hesitated, but took a drink anyway—just a little one, as apology, then pressed the mug between his hands. You’re acting like a lunatic, Watson… Pull it together. They’re just trying to help…

He sighed and rubbed the grit from the corners of his eyes; “So, who here thinks John Watson’s gone round the bend?” He was the first to poke his hand into the air.

Greg sighed and leaned back in his seat, some of the tension leeching from him; “What are we supposed to think? The way you acted, if I’d been anyone else I’d have called an ambulance,” He rubbed his face; “But I’m not anyone else am I… No, neither of us really think you’ve lost it.”

John’s brows curled down and his hand returned to his lap.

Mrs. Hudson had begun tearing a paper tissue to bits between her hands and a few of the pieces fluttered to land on the floor between her shoes; “I showed him the photo, John… On your mobile…” She glanced over at Greg who was looking away rubbing the back of his neck. “He sent the phone off and the gentleman—“

“Clarke,” Lestrade supplied.

“—Mr. Clarke, came ‘round just a bit ago to return it. He said there wasn’t a thing wrong with it, and the same messages that appeared on your phone, and Inspec—“ She hesitated; “—And his… Were on it… They didn’t come from anywhere else…” She glanced at her fingers and pressed them to her knees to stop their fiddling; “We’ve both tried to get in touch with S-Sherlock’s brother, but there’s no answer.”

Greg looked more at the wall than at John when he spoke; “I badgered and managed to find that assistant of his, she’s on the continent… said he was unreachable unless it was a dire issue of national security and even then, I’ve no doubt that she’d man the front not him… He blames himself for this, John—“

“As well he should,” John very nearly regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth… nearly.

Greg takes a long deep breath and lets it out slowly then finally turns his eyes to John’s; “What was that mess with the salt for?”

“Containment,” John says the word between his teeth in something akin to a hiss. He swallows; “To keep him in and keep… other things out.”

“Other things like what?”

“I don’t know… I just know that while he was here he was alright, he was safe and now God only knows where he’s gone.”

Greg hesitates, struggling for the words; “You really believe he was there?”

John wanted to tell him that he’d seen Sherlock, talked to him, had his not-quite-there hands and arms in his chest and been affected by how gleefully Sherlock had accepted being dead as an advantage to continue the work. Instead he tightened his jaw and met Greg’s stare evenly.

Lestrade stared at him for a bit, quietly, just breathing. He shook his head suddenly; “I’m not saying anything… I accepted the fact long ago that there are things out there nobody can explain, but for Christ sake, John… IF he is still here, and IF for some reason you can communicate with him, why can’t you convince him to move on? Doesn’t it hurt him to still be here like this?”

John’s jaw tightened further but he couldn’t make himself look away. If he can only hold Lestrade’s stare long enough—impose his dominance on the situation they’ll drop it and everything can go back to how it was… It can go back to Sherlock madly explaining how fantastic being dead was, that now he could have answers that weren’t possible when he’d been alive… They’d be together again. Sherlock and John… Nothing had to change.

He could watch Sherlock’s very soul decay slowly as it remained exposed to the dark intent of the world… watch the man he admired and cared for so deeply be changed by the world that fascinated him so. Changed inexorably until there was absolutely nothing of Sherlock Holmes left at all.

He remembered vaguely what Iris Jade had told him, over the phone what felt like ages ago, when he had called her back to get more information on what was happening after Sherlock dissipated from the first circle, but it had only been two nights before.

_“A spirit can’t create its own energy. It can exist merely on the energy given off by the earth, but mostly a spirit like that goes on unnoticed, just shapeless motion from the corner of your eye… You mentioned his phone, that the battery drains itself very quickly… That makes sense. He was very attached to his phone. A spirit can draw on that, batteries, electricity, even your own energy and for a while this makes them strong enough to manifest… To show themselves, or make themselves known, this though is problematic. Where drawing from the phone, or maybe the battery from something else may be annoying it won’t technically harm him in any way. The energy isn’t tainted by another soul… Drawing from a person, drawing from you or someone on the street is dangerous because a person’s energy—yours, mine, everyone else’s—is coloured by our intent and emotions,” She took a deep breath; “A living person’s intent is so easily picked up on by someone who’s passed when they draw on them for energy. It’s like if you rub your finger through wet paint the colour comes off on you. Just existing outside of your body is like rubbing constantly along wet paint… A soul sustained by the very intent and emotions of people surrounding them is unable to defend against that intent… What I’m saying, John, is that if he remains here, pretty soon all that will be left of him is just a shell filled with the intent of others. He won’t be the person you remember and cared about. If he remains here, he won’t be himself anymore… He’ll become something Dark.”_

_John had swallowed nervously; “Something Dark?”_

_She’d spoken in a soft, kind voice. “Without a body one’s soul is exposed, just like I told you before. Without something to anchor it one can become caught up in the flow of the world’s energy. Imagine a swimmer in a rip tide. Without aid what is that person’s chance of surviving once caught?” She paused and started again slowly; “A tether can just as quickly drown you as it can pull you to safety, John… At this moment you are his tether,” He had tried to find something in the room to look at as a distraction and separate himself from the conversation so he didn’t have to hear, his chest aching terribly, but she spoke so quietly, with such genuine concern he could picture her in his mind and the naked sadness and sympathy he heard in her voice was plain on her face and the sincerity of it made the hurt all the worse; “I know it hurts, I know you need him and you want him back but this isn’t right, John and you know it… If you love him—in any way, as a friend or brother or perhaps more it doesn’t matter to me— you need to let him know it’s OK to move on, that yes it will hurt you but that staying with you will only hurt you both more in the end. You want him but you want him as he truly is, not warped and coloured by the intent of others—and I know that deep down, no matter how much you want him back right this minute, you’ll make the right choice. Just think which would be worse. The rest of your life apart, or an eternity torn asunder because you couldn’t bear to live without him,” John tried to push the thought down, tried to shove the knowledge from his mind because it hurt too much and he knew she was right but she held on tightly to him with her voice and ignored the wetness of his words by bravely baring the tears in her own; “And if he tries to Go, you can’t hold him back, John. Help him… Don’t drown him.”_

0-0-0

0-0-0


	8. Chapter 8

Sherlock re-centred himself back in the flat fifteen hours or more after Lestrade’s foot through the line of salt pulled him apart. It was an entirely unfamiliar and unwanted experience… being exploded outward into millions of pieces.

No, no that wasn’t quite right, it was more like expanding and compressing air. In the circle before, he’d gotten used to that pressure and when the line had been broken he’d expanded too quickly to control and it had taken him a bit to reconfigure himself according to the new pressure zone of the flat… When THAT line had been broken he’d expanded again and for a bit—a shining bright amazing instant, he’d been aware of everything at once and then he’d slowly begun to contract back toward normal. That instant of pure KNOWLEDGE had been gone, leaving him with a vague sense of being very small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but somehow cocooned and well looked after in the same moment. He also had the dim impression that something wasn’t exactly right within himself… Something felt—felt heavy in a familiar completely surprising way, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, so he dismissed it for the time being and focused on what he did know, instead of trying to make pieces fit that obviously weren’t going to.

He drifted for a while, around—within—THROUGH London and came across a few more people in a similar situation as himself. Most of them weren’t talkative, but a few were to an inordinate degree. It seems being dead in London meant fewer than normal people wanted anything to do with you. Living people were so wrapped up in their own lives they hardly ever stopped to wonder who else was there. He asked around for a bit, gathering information and seeking out evidence that might help him, in some way, clear Lestrade’s as well as John’s name. It wasn’t easy by any means, but what evidence Moriarty did leave behind was usually taken care of by a bullet. On this side of things, that evidence was still present, he just had to find it. Perhaps if one of his victims could remember something—anything at all that might point to some little mistake, a crack, some little SOMETHING, he could have it. He was a mind without the trouble of transport, he could do anything he wanted… Strange how he suddenly had a hard time thinking of himself as dead when hours ago the idea that he had transcended the world of the living made him feel so giddy. A cold bit of panic settled in his chest when he tried it now, and he saw John’s face dimly, hovering over him with an expression of blind terror mixed with a doctor’s intuition… Sherlock knew what that face meant and that it had literally been the last thing he’d seen—just as everything had gone dark. John Watson looking down at him and hoping—praying that he wasn’t dead—but the sadness, the emptiness when he’d been unable to find a pulse… Hesitant fingertips on his face and…

Sherlock stopped talking to the Others after he encountered the lingering spirit of a young man—if he remembered the case correctly it had been years and years ago—he’d been stabbed nineteen times in the throat and face with a screw driver, a jealous ex-lover taking revenge that he tried to disguise as a mugging, the young man’s name escaped him, but when Sherlock tried to talk to him he was shocked to silence when the young man looked at him with eyes too large and too dark to be normal, the wounds that killed him visible and dripping a thick black substance, crept toward him with grabbing hands—It seemed minds-without-transport could touch one another and this young man decided he wanted to touch Sherlock very much with his hands that no longer looked like hands— Sherlock felt, he wanted to call them talons, scrape against his arm and he’d been inundated by such violent anger and hatred and mindless hunger it had caused him pain, blinding and slicing through his body as if he’d been smashed into by a large truck. He’d done the only thing he could think of to escape, he’d let himself Pop Out again— focusing all his energy on a different place and he’d instantly go there— and when he came back to himself he was in a familiar place, standing in front of Angelo’s staring down at the table by the window and a lone candle burning in the centre… Like some kind of memorial.

He had to admit, in that instant that he didn’t really know what he was doing. He hadn’t been out of the flat since… since he became aware again After. He’d gone down and poked his nose around Mrs. Hudson’s a few times, but he’d not left. Not gone outside or even contemplated going out and now here he was traversing London in the dark alone in more ways than he ever had been before. As much as he tried to dodge people as he walked, more often than not they walked right through him and he was overcome by that strange electric sensation like when John had slapped a hand through his shoulders and chest. It was like a shock, but what was more, when the person did it, he could suddenly feel exactly what they were, he thought what they were, wanted what they wanted… It was such a base violation he could only stand it for a few breathless terrifying moments before he had to Pop Out to escape it.

These people on the street were so different now. Ugly… Overwhelming.

Strange, how knowing what they’re thinking and doing and their motivations was so simple seeming when he’d been alive, how easily he’d deduced it, said it aloud and brushed it off. Now? Now it seemed to stick to him like some viscous liquid splashed on his hands. Cloying and sour and bitter and sick. Caustic like acid as it burned into his core and festered.

John… When John had touched him Sherlock had been briefly overcome with two conflicting emotions… Pain mixed with anger and something wounded, terrified and defiant… He didn’t have words to simplify what he’d felt in that instant. It had startled him so completely he’d leapt away from the touch but only a moment later tried to recreate it, tried to feel it again so he could classify it, so he could understand it and appreciate it because he wanted to… Oh, GOD he wanted to so badly because that was what John felt about him. That was what John actually truthfully, no lies or subterfuge or misdirection FELT about him and it had been so tragic, so bitter sweet and beautiful he’d felt it in everything he was, even that heavy alien portion of himself he felt so disconnected from. He felt it like he did when he was composing, acute and all-consuming and in that moment of confusion when he’d recognized the feeling he’d been overcome with such powerful joy that yes—YES! Someone else knew! Someone else felt it, someone UNDERSTOOD what had eluded him his whole life! Someone had the key to what he’d been trying to unlock and that person was John Watson.

But no matter how he’d tried, or how deeply into John’s person he’d reached he hadn’t felt it again and it was so painful to finally find it and then have it slip through his fingers, because it didn’t matter what John felt for him or how intensely he felt it himself now that he recognized what it was. Sherlock Holmes was dead.

_I don’t want to be dead anymore…_ He didn’t even realize he was thinking it until he’d repeated it aloud, sitting on the roof of Bart’s looking down at the street between his dangling feet, imagining himself falling…

“I don’t want to be dead anymore, John…”

Sherlock took a deep breath and re-centred himself standing by the window of John’s bedroom, staring down at the smaller man, tucked so lovingly into his bed. He was deeply—catastrophically asleep and Sherlock swallowed a strange hollow burning in the back of his throat and stepped closer to the bed, easing himself down as if he feared the mattress jostling, pressing himself so close he could feel that thin electric tingle of himself so near John’s living breathing body. He hid his face in the back of the smaller man’s neck and willed himself to forget that he was dead. Willed the information away—deleted it… tried to delete it, but he couldn’t…

He closed his eyes tightly and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, watching—expecting the little hairs on the back of John’s neck to stir, but they did not.

He let himself fade, not thinking of anything at all, nothing. Just sank back into that heavy shard deep in his core.

It was dark. Utterly dark, heavy and there was muted white noise like wind rushing by his ears from a high place… He focused, tried to open his eyes here in this heavy place, but nothing happened.

_Is this my grave? Is this where I am now? Dead and buried like everyone else?_

He could hear soft noises in that dull roar. Quiet noises…

_Worms? Maggots? The minute gnaw of bacteria and mould? Rats? Water? It has been raining a lot lately…_

There was pressure in odd places. A touch to his wrist, his stomach, the side of his face.

_Rats then…_

A tug at his left hand and arm, pressure at his head and moving at his middle.

Sherlock withdrew deciding that feeling rats moving about in one’s rotting corpse was decidedly Not Good, and he didn’t need to feel that, no… not ever.

John wasn’t in the bed when he opened his eyes and the windows glowed grey with the oncoming dawn.

There were voices in the sitting room and when Sherlock peered out the door he saw John sitting in his chair holding a cup of tea tightly between shaking hands, and Lestrade sitting on the sofa. It looked like they’d been there a while and between them there was one of Mrs. Hudson’s trays, empty now but for a few biscuits and a pot of tea that looked to have gone cold quite a while ago.

“I know it’s crazy,” John said without looking up, “But I can’t shake the feeling that if I let him go… If he Goes… that that’s the end. Good bye, no more Sherlock,” He swallowed and turned his mug between his palms; “Could that be it? Could that be why he’s here? I’ve… I’ve pulled him back?”

Lestrade propped his jaw exhaustedly on his fist and blinked—it was an awkward motion, one eye just a microsecond before the other. He was obviously struggling to stay awake. He hummed but didn’t offer much of an answer.

John, catching the pale shadow of Sherlock from the corner of his eye, glanced over, but didn’t turn his head, as if trying to convince himself that he wasn’t there, or maybe not visibly look so as not to alert Lestrade to the fact that he was.

Sherlock knew it was more that John was angry that he’d left and relieved that he’d returned, but didn’t want that relief to show.

Lestrade however, caught the motion and with a yawn, glanced over as well. He could doze off here… right here, right now and he wouldn’t care… His eyes closed.

Sherlock watched for half a breath, unmoving, because a little line of tension had blossomed between Lestrade’s eyebrows and slowly—ever so slowly like a hunter creeping up on its pray, Lestrade’s eyes slit back open to perhaps the thickness of a razor blade and his breath froze in his throat.

John looked up, cup of cold tea halfway to his lips, Greg’s left arm, where he’d braced it over the back of the sofa twitched, just barely a hair’s breadth. “Greg?”

Lestrade swallowed, it seemed quite difficult; “Christ, John, don’t move…” He hissed from the corner of his mouth. “I… I think.”

John did move, he turned and stared at Sherlock, then turned back to Lestrade, leaned close with his eyes wide and his lips compressed; “You can see him, can’t you… You can!”

Lestrade didn’t move even an inch.

“He can see me?” Sherlock came slowly into the room and pressed in close to Lestrade, almost climbing into his lap. Laughing inside when the older man leaned steadily backward to avoid contact, until he was lying sprawled on the sofa like a fainting damsel, eyes widening big enough to pop from his head, lips naught but a thin pale slash across his face.

Sherlock jumped backward triumphantly with a little kick, hands knotted beneath his chin; “BRILLIANT! It must have something to do with sleep! Now, if I can just catch Mrs. Hudson right before she nods off—“

“No, Sherlock. You’ll give the poor woman a heart attack,” John said mildly and rubbed his face.

Sherlock rubbed his hands together deviously; “Ah, now… To find my brother,” He chuckled—

Lestrade slowly sat up, eyes still wide; “Is this a joke?” He swallowed; “Did—did you fake all this? Is that it? You’ve faked it?”

Sherlock sighed and his shoulders slumped. He turned back to Lestrade looked pointedly at him with a very fake smile and politely put his hand through John’s head a few times as if trying to play xylophone on his molars.

John leaned away and looked at him annoyed; “Honestly? You shove your hand through me to prove— God, why do I bother,” He slumped down and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Right!” Lestrade’s voice was very high pitched; He cleared his throat a few times and it finally came out normal again; “Right, so… so you’re… Jesus, you’re really—Offed then. Okay,” He rubbed his hands together; “Right, no sleep for me,” He chuckled; “I’m talking to a ghost…”

Sherlock talked non-stop until well after ten. He paced back and forth and told John, as well as Lestrade, what he’d found out while walking around London. He left out the bit about encountering the Darkened spirit of that young man, he was trying madly to delete that particular memory, but couldn’t quite manage it because that sick slimy feeling of HATE was still living under his skin and he couldn’t make it leave… He could feel it bubbling and… festering deep inside him.

Lestrade seemed more than slightly uncomfortable with the whole thing and every so often went very quiet and just STARED at Sherlock in disbelief. It was obvious that he was trying to accept it, trying really very hard, but he couldn’t quite reconcile in his mind that here he was speaking to the semi-transparent, bodiless apparition of Sherlock Holmes as if it were the most natural thing to do.

While Sherlock was detailing his findings concerning his new ‘cases’ John nudged Greg’s foot with his own and spoke in a whisper; “It’s alright, he’s not that different now… except well… He won’t collapse from exhaustion again.”

Greg swallowed and looked John in the eye, his discomfort plainly evident; “You have to tell him to Go, John… I’ll be alright, I don’t mind working in security… He needs to move on… It’s not natural… It’s unhealthy. I miss him just as much as you but this can’t go on. He’s alright now, but what will happen if he goes off? He’s meant to Go, John… He needs to. I can’t say it any more plainly than that. He NEEDS to Go before something happens to him that he can’t!”

Sherlock was still pacing, this time partially stepping through his own chair as he turned, dressing gown flapping about. It seemed he’d been right though, the dead only hear what they want to hear. He hadn’t even noticed John and Lestrade talking; “There should be a communication highway for minds-without-transport… I’ll have to find it, gossip maybe—The Others I’ve found are unbearably chatty so it must be gossip, either that or there is no communication between them and this whole endeavour is pointless, which would be frustrating but not insurmountable. John, I need to visit the cemetery… I need to find more individuals in a similar state to myself and confer with them.”

“Sherlock, I don’t think that’s—“

He was already making a beeline toward his room. John sighed and offered his own room to Lestrade so the ex-detective inspector could sleep while he tried to make sure Sherlock didn’t kill himself… again. God, my life…

Sherlock was standing in front of his wardrobe pawing through it; “I’ve not tried to change clothes since this happened… Why am I in pyjamas? Did I die in pyjamas?”

John leaned against the door frame and shook his head.

“Right, so theoretically I should be able to change clothes then.” He shed his dressing gown and tee, and pushed his trousers off, kicking them toward the corner where they faded as soon as he set his hands upon slacks and a shirt.

John glanced away as Sherlock went through the ritual of dressing, but couldn’t help but smirk a little watching him tuck his shirt in. It seemed absurd that Sherlock, in his immaterial state would have to tuck in his shirt.

Once dressed Sherlock looked for his coat but it wasn’t there. John looked at the floor and cleared his throat; “It—er—it…”

Sherlock’s shoulders slumped dramatically and he bowed into his jacket instead. It wasn’t like he needed the coat any longer, but he felt strange without it. Like something was missing.

John wasn’t sure why he went along with it, going to the cemetery, but he felt compelled to achieve normality. To ignore the fact Sherlock couldn’t talk to him in the cab, make witty comments about the driver, or interact with anyone but him. He tried to ignore it, tried to push it from his mind and for a few moments, sitting there he could almost forget that Sherlock was dead and that if he’d glanced up at the driver’s rear mirror he would only have seen himself sitting there in the back. He tried to forget that as they walked past shop windows the thin reflection played on the glass was of a lone man not the pair of them as he’d been so used to.

Sherlock walked slower the closer to the cemetery they got until he finally just stopped in the middle of the path outside the gate and looked around as if confused.

“Sherlock?” John paused, hands in his pockets, and looked at him, glancing quickly back and forth to make sure no one was near enough to think him mad for talking to thin air. “Alright?”

Sherlock turned and looked down the street; “Can you hear that?”

John cocked his ear to the wind; “Hear what?”

Sherlock turned carefully to face the south east, his eyes narrowed. It was a strange, tingling sensation. Distant, dim… Like a faint breeze or the sound of a storm through the calm that precedes it. He let his eyes fall closed and felt himself moving… head tilting to the left as if hearing music he found especially appealing.

John watched as a strangely calm, almost serene expression passed over Sherlock’s features and his form began to fade out, ever so slightly easing into transparency. It was nothing like before when the salt lines had been broken, or when he popped into or out of one place or another. It wasn’t sudden or deliberate… This was something gentle, a transition.

John felt his throat closing up because he knew instantly what it was… Sherlock was trying to Go and panic shot through him because no, no it was too soon. He’d only had him back now for a few days, he wasn’t ready to let him Go already!

“What’s it sound like?” His voice caught and came out as a whisper. He wanted to know, wanted so desperately to hear it himself so he could follow, so there wouldn’t be a time where they were separated because that separation would tear him apart inside and he didn’t quite know why. He’d had friends who had died before and there had never been this terrible aching void where they had been. Yes, he missed them, he had mourned but never to this degree. Watching Sherlock Go, made him feel as if part of himself were being slowly and cruelly sliced away. He couldn’t stand it!

Sherlock had a brief, vivid image in his head of a window. Tall and thin, opened enough to let the breeze in, and beyond it was a courtyard of white stone and pale delicate flowers. Some people were moving about out there. Men and women in pale clothes, sunlight glinting of shining metal. There were trees, tall and deeply green, pines, a few more he couldn’t identify and in the distance he could see mountains. Towering snowy teeth and a white foamy slash on the nearest one—so close he could smell and hear the roar of it through the trees, was a waterfall.

He’d never been one to think a landscape beautiful, to find anything but the changes man could make on the earth’s face worth his time. Usually he found such natural wonders distracting and obtrusive, dull and grim and not worth his time unless it involved murder or mayhem. But there was something different about this… something so subtly and extraordinarily different about it.

That heavy alien part of him felt as if it were pulling him and in that instant he felt more than heard his name… A whisper in a voice he couldn’t quite remember but was so familiar it ached in his chest.

_Sherlock?_

Then it all faded away and Sherlock was left standing in the street and John was next to him, fingers lifted and meshed with his own, like an anchor, dragging him back.

John let out a slow breath and his expression was sad, yet relieved. “Alright? I thought I’d lost you there for a second.”

Sherlock shook his head and blinked repeatedly. He was confused and although John was touching him again what he felt through him wasn’t the same, it was… different. It made him feel disjointed from the earth and it took a few seconds of looking around and flexing his fingers where John had touched him before he was able to settle enough to turn back to the cemetery.

John watched him walk ahead and there was a slow cold ache in the bottom of his heart. Something unnatural and… and guilty.

I’m not drowning him, He said in a growl to that ache; I’m not… I’m saving him.

It was a strangely peaceful place, devoid of the multitude Sherlock had expected and though he was still slightly rattled from his experience at the gate, he spoke to every single one he came across that would talk back.

John felt unnerved that he could see the vague outlines of these—he refused to use the ‘G’ word it seemed disrespectful, made them sound less than human. He was even more unsettled when he realized that he’d been able to see such vague thin shapes from the very corner of his eye his entire life but never paid any attention to them. The only one that was clearly and perfectly visible was Sherlock, the others were just pale shadows, thin and barely there, only visible when they moved.

Some of the Others Sherlock encountered couldn’t help him at all. They begged him and John in turn to please, please find this loved one or that one and tell them this, that if someone would only tell them this one important detail they would feel such peace and be able to GO.

Eventually John pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket and a pen and began writing down the names Sherlock told him and the messages. Most of them were sentimental tripe according to Sherlock.

‘I love you,’ a few I forgive you’s, even one or two ‘I have money hidden here that I want you to have’. One in particular stood out, a young woman dead now some thirty years, wanted a message relayed to the man she’d been married to, ‘I remember the fox glove.’

Sherlock seemed quite intrigued by that one and made sure John took note of it and the woman’s name so later they could look her up and see how she had died since she was Gone just moments after telling them.

And then there he was.

0-0-0

0-0-0


	9. Chapter 9

There he was, just sitting there, on a bench looking over the lines of stone markers, hands folded in his lap.

“No…. Oh no, Sherlock, you’ve got to be joking!” John stopped in his tracks crumpling his paper, staring because he feard, if he looked away he may lose track of the man and wind up dead himself .

Sherlock sighed, walked forward and sat on the other end of the bench, staring in the same direction. It seemed like a good direction to stare into when talking to a man who tried to kill you… or, more in truth, tried to get you to kill yourself.

“Fancy meeting you here,” He said, “Not so clever after all, are you, Mr. Holmes,” He looked up at John and addressed him with a nod and one word; “Death.”

John’s brows curled down.

“Tell me,” Sherlock said casually; “For a man so ready to die, you’ve been lingering a long while, haven’t you?”

Jefferson Hope smiled and turned in his seat, crossing one knee over the other; “Unfinished business and all that… Think we’re in the same boat so I wouldn’t be so smug about it if I were you.”

“And what unfinished business is that?”

“Don’ know, do I? Or else I’dve done it and been Gone by now… Though I do find this a bit reassuring… How He got you in the end, just like He said He would.”

“Yes, but He ‘Got’ himself as well.”

Hope’s smile was getting bigger; “Did’ee now? Funny… I don’t see him anywhere, do you?”

Sherlock didn’t answer.

“What I want to know is how a man, clever as you, can’t even see what’s in front of his own face.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes; “Is this about that damned laundry truck?”

Hope stared at him for a minute then laughed, “Oh, that’s rich. You really have no idea, do you!” He laughed again, louder and a few birds fled a nearby tree, so unsettling the energy released from him was.

“I want evidence,” Sherlock said once Hope had dwindled to quiet giggles. “If any of Moriarty’s pawns was minimally clever enough to get evidence against him, I’d say it was most likely to be you and since it is nigh impossible to lie in this condition…” He let the sentence drag on.

Hope bobs his head; “Well, you’d be right about that… The question is,” He leaned close; “What are you willing to exchange for it?”

Sherlock hesitated, straightened his jacket and glanced up again; “John here can see you… He can hear you and can personally deliver any message you want, to whomsoever pleases you most.”

Hope was utterly silent, eyes fixed on John. “Cannee now?”

“Unfortunately,” John said, squaring his shoulders.

This was dangerous. What message would he have to relay? Would Hope make him confess to the man’s death? Would he demand something worse?

Hope worked his tongue around the inside of his mouth. “ I want you to write a letter.”

“A letter?” John’s brow cocked up.

“To my kids… There’s a safety deposit box they should have… Not their mother, jus’ them. I didn’t expect your little crack shot here, Mr. Holmes, and lookin’ back on it it’s a good thing… I’m dead, but I still had that money, HE didn’t take it back… My kids get it now, nobody else and that’s fine with me… What you want though, that’ll be tricky,” He turns and looks Sherlock right in the eye and there’s something peaceful in his expression now that he knows what he wanted will happen. John Watson is a sympathetic man, he can feel it. John won’t lie on Sherlock’s behalf. His kids will get the money.

“How tricky?”

“Depends on if they re-commissioned my cab or not… If they haven’t, you’ll want to get in it… and think like me—If you can manage it.”

“Don’t be vague—“

“Why? I don’t care if you get It or not! I’m DEAD because of you two! If I could I’d lie just to watch you squirm… But since I can’t, and since _you_ can’t, I’d say we’re on an even playing field…”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed; “One more things… the pills?”

Hope snorted; “What about them?”

“Was I right?”

Hope’s grin turns unpleasantly wide; “It’s eaten at you inside all this time, hasn’t it… You know, just because I can’t lie, doesn’t mean I can’t refuse to answer…” He turned and looked right at John, “I’ll be in touch.”

Then he Popped Out and Sherlock was positively fuming.

0-0-0

It took longer than John wanted to admit to find the cab that had been Jefferson Hope’s. Long enough that Greg said they were mad and went back to his sisters. Long enough that Sherlock had managed to focus his energy enough to truly begin leaving messes about the flat. Books knocked off shelves, John’s torch flicking on and off at random, strange OTHERS in the flat looking for John to relay messages for them in exchange for information.

Long enough that John had caught himself making tea for Sherlock he knew the man would never again be able to drink… He thought that hurt more than seeing Sherlock walking through walls, or conversing with London’s Dead. Strange how the idea of Sherlock never being able to have tea, or sneak a biscuit every so often made his heart ache so.

John had consulted Iris Jade a few days after the cemetery incident and told her what was happening. She’d given him the advice to type letters and send them under a pseudonym and if the person wanted to hear the message they would, if not no harm was done and he had upheld his end of the bargain. The spirit would move on because, yes, their message had been delivered, it was up to the recipient to accept it or not.

He asked if doing this for a living was always so stressful, her voice smiled and she said; “Not always.”

John had asked her what name to use and Iris had laughed quietly and said in a soft voice; “Whatever you like… I use my mother and grandmother’s names, but you already deduced that.”

“What is your name… Your— your real name?”

She hesitated, but told him and for a moment John was quiet, tasting it on his tongue.

Sherlock scowled at him from the corner of the room and made faces in his irritation but couldn’t bring himself to make rude comments. Instead he slouched dramatically in his chair flicking John’s torch on and off in time with his fingertips tapping to his lips and tried not to dwell on the memory of that sensation when John had initiated contact between them days ago.

John called HER frequently over the passing days for advice, or just to sit in his room and talk while Sherlock paced madly about or went in search of Jefferson Hope’s old cab. 

Mrs. Hudson, who believed John when he said Sherlock’s spirit was still around, still hadn’t seen him herself and usually addressed things that randomly tipped over as if he were the one who’d done it. Sometimes he was, most of the time he wasn’t, though he did enjoy sometimes moving her reading glasses and hiding them until she became frustrated and said with a stamp of her foot or a stern cross of her arms; “Bring them back, Sherlock Holmes!”

Eventually he would, or if she’d just happened to forget she’d pushed them on top of her head he’d focus and push them down again.

Sherlock found himself becoming frustrated very easily with this. Having to focus so much of his energy into moving things enough to make physical impact on them, it had taken him five days to read the paper because he refused to let John turn the pages for him.

The Transport, he decided, wasn’t so bad… He found himself sitting by John as he slept and willing himself to forget he was dead… Willing himself to live again…

He would lie there pressed as closely to John as he could, wishing for the other man to roll over and initiate contact so he could feel John’s intent, could feel that… longing again because it made the fact he was dead hurt so badly but at the same time made him feel so alive.

They found Jefferson Hope’s old cab nearly three weeks later. It had been re-commissioned and was now driven by a man named Dave Tully. Dave Tully was a large man and he liked to talk… However, he didn’t much enjoy listening. And it took another four days to actually get the man to stop and pick John up so Sherlock had vicarious transport to pocket the evidence once he’d discovered it.

He found the whole idea tedious.

John and Mrs. Hudson managed to flag down Tully’s cab near Trafalgar Square and rode around in the back for a while, pretending to be Mother and Son while Sherlock… Well, Sherlock was in the front beside the driver and groaned and moaned and made rude comments about Mr. Tully’s boring stories and body odour while he stroked his hands through the cab searching for something that rang of Jefferson Hope’s intent.

John tried not to watch him, but it was kind of difficult, Sherlock very much enjoyed being watched.

“No one cares about your damned ingrown toenails, you pigeon minded—HA! HAHA!” Sherlock was upside down in the seat halfway through Dave Tully’s legs feeling about under the steering wheel. “John!” He cried excitedly, “John, I’ve found it!” He focused, pushing all his energy into it and tried again and again and again to pull it free. A computer memory stick, taped to the inside of the dash behind the cab’s steering wheel. If only he could… if only he could just GRAB it!

Sherlock snarled as for the twentieth time he couldn’t quite catch the thing between his fingers and in a fit of rage drawn from Dave Tully’s smothering energy Sherlock lifted one foot and stamped it hard against the glass separating the back of the cab from the driver… And broke it.

Mrs. Hudson shouted in alarm, Tully barked out in rage, the cab swerved wildly and came to a stop at an angle in the dead centre of an intersection.

John saw it coming and braced himself, arms around Mrs. Hudson to protect her and the cab behind them hit the back passenger door with enough force to spin them—tires screeching glass shattering, spinning across the street and into oncoming traffic.

The collision knocked the memory stick free into the floor beneath Tully’s stomping feet and Sherlock righted himself, gripping it with every ounce of energy he had and thrust his hand through the opening in the separation window toward John; “Take it! TAKE IT!”

John caught the stick as it fell through Sherlock’s fingers and stuffed it quickly into his pocket the other hand checking Mrs. Hudson over for injury, asking repeatedly if she was alright and trying to clear the blood from her face but Mrs. Hudson’s eyes were locked on the front seat, one hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Sherlock looked at her and for that one moment he knew that in her fright and shock she could see him and he swallowed with a measure of difficulty and reached out to mime a pat on her shoulder, “Alright?”

She didn’t nod or respond to him but he knew she could see, could finally see him and that was enough. Knowing John had the memory stick and that hopefully it would hold the evidence they needed, Sherlock rocked back and stood from the cab, hands in his pockets while he watched as the police arrived, an ambulance not long behind. There wasn’t much he could do, so once he’d stayed long enough to see Mrs. Hudson was off to hospital and seemed coherent, albeit a bit shaken up, he went back to John’s side.

“She’s not having a heart attack, is she?”

John had a bit of gauze taped to his head and bruises on his legs but was otherwise unscathed. “She’s in shock. Aside from a bump on the head and a possibly broken arm she’s alright…” He turned and scowled severely at Sherlock; “What were you thinking… breaking the glass like that? You could have got us killed!”

“It wasn’t intentional. And being dead’s not that bad…” He snuffed and looked around at the crowd disinterestedly.

John winced; “Sherlock…” He sighed and looked up only to glance away quickly with a sigh; “Your head’s bleeding…”

0-0-0

John plugged the memory stick into his laptop just moments after they returned to the flat. Mrs. Hudson was spending the night in hospital for observation and John had promised to come collect her in the morning and explain things a bit.

The memory stick had a wealth of information on it, e-mails and text messages, sound files and images, even video. All of it was proof. It wasn’t enough to fully clear Sherlock’s name, but it was enough to cast reasonable doubt. It was all the evidence they would need to get Lestrade his job back and if they could do that, they could work to find more proof. With this proof already in hand, they may be able to track down The Woman… And Sherlock knew for a fact she had evidence enough to blow the whole case wide open. Then again, after what had happened last time, if he made contact and they agreed to meet, she may just politely tell him to piss off and hit him with her riding crop a few more times. And although he knew pain was part of the job sometime, he really didn’t enjoy frivolous beating of his person. Flagellation was not one of his more favourite pass times.

Standing there over John’s shoulder while he read through the information, a disbelieving grin on his face, Sherlock felt overjoyed. It wasn’t everything, but it would be enough! John would have his job back, his reputation would be restored, Lestrade would have his job returned, his name would be cleared completely. With a bit of luck and some helpful hints from an ‘anonymous’ psychic—John snorted at being called a psychic— Sherlock’s name could eventually be cleared. The people of London would finally know the truth. Sherlock would be able to WORK again and—

And he… he was dead… 

John sighed, copied the files onto his computer, onto his own memory stick and for good measure e-mailed them to one of Sherlock’s reliable contacts who would back the files up and hide them so even if something should happen to the other copies the information wouldn’t be lost. The young man promised to get copies them to the proper authorities. Ones who could be trusted with such sensitive information, John asked if Mycroft should be informed but Sherlock didn’t answer him.

Sherlock was standing there, his stance defensive and a strange crackling energy was beginning to fill the room.

“I see you’ve got what you were after.”

John turned at the voice from the doorway and was entirely unnerved to see the cabbie standing there with squared shoulders.

“Now… as for that letter.”

John nodded and typed exactly what he was told. He didn’t like how he was forced to word it. He didn’t like it because Hope, even though he couldn’t lie, could misdirect the truth with ease. He had been corrupted by the world enough that with just a few choice words, he could cast doubt on his own willing involvement in the whole thing. That with just a few words he could make himself look like a victim and in turn cast doubt on the contents of the memory stick they had spent weeks recovering.

Jefferson Hope, unwilling victim of Moriarty and Holmes. His hand forced by Moriarty, into playing the game or his children would be brutally murdered, then coldly murdered himself by some ‘unknown’ assailant. John despised writing such base manipulation of the facts but he’d given his word and as much as Sherlock paced and berated Hope that he was basically lying the man continued on as if he didn’t so much as register Sherlock’s presence in the room.

Sherlock paced over and took a seat across from John, his eyes narrowed intently as he stared at the cables running from the computer. Maybe he could manipulate it and retype the message without Hope or John realizing.

As Hope finished dictating and began giving instructions, to whom the letter would be sent, John could feel something happening, a gentle lifting of the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck and as he typed the last line he glanced over and noticed a serene expression on Hope’s face, so strange because the man in life had always looked so bitter, betrayed, and loftily distant as if he were owed something by the world.

“Funny,” Hope said, “Sounds like music…” And suddenly he was Gone, not fading, but just… just Gone.

Sherlock’s focus was broken from the computer’s cables and lines and he stared at where the cabbie had been just a second before. He looked mildly confused, but didn’t say anything, and when he turned back he couldn’t quite meet John’s eye. He stood and went to his arm chair, drawing his knees up and tucking his arms to his chest. His head hurt again, everything hurt in a dull not-quite-solid way and he couldn’t think… why couldn’t he think?

John sat there a moment staring at what he’d typed and rubbed his face a moment. His fingers hovered over the print key, then with a shake of his head he sat up in his chair and highlighted the untruthful second half of the letter, then politely deleted it.

“Psychics never tell their patrons overly depressing news when it’s about a departed loved one because nobody wants to hear it. It’s upsetting and not particularly convenient because nobody wants to think of their loved one in pain after death. They always say what you want to hear so you will feel at peace and by using your energy They will feel at peace…” He typed quickly winding a quick but efficient tale for Jefferson Hope’s children, how much he loved them and that he wanted them to have the money to go to school and fulfil their dreams. It was a message any grieving child would want to hear and it may not have been the exact truth, but sometimes it was better to be at peace than undeceived.

John printed it and sealed it in an envelope with the address Hope had given them on the front. He tapped it a few times on the desktop and sighed with an air of finality; “I’ll take this out tomorrow and put it in the post somewhere far from here…” He rubbed his face and stretched his arms above his head, cracking his back. “I think,” He grunted and let his arms back down to his sides; “I’ll turn in now…” He motioned to his laptop; “Should I leave this open so you can—“

Sherlock didn’t look up from where he was staring into the kitchen at John’s lone mug sitting on the empty table. He’d seen John making tea, seen how sometimes if he was distracted, nor not actively thinking that Sherlock was just energy and intent, he would make two cups like usual then stand there and stare at one with such a hurt, lonely expression on his face. And for some reason, seeing John hurt like that, seeing him visibly mourning made Sherlock feel disconnected, heavy and far away. It made him hurt as well because this was how things would be for the rest of John’s life… Living with a Ghost.

Sherlock hadn’t really realized until that moment that John hadn’t said that word. Hadn’t used it and had flinched when Lestrade did. He changed the channel when some programme on the telly mentioned ghosts or hauntings and sometimes turned it off entirely.

As much as John didn’t want to think about it, as much as it hurt, this was the truth of the matter. As long as Sherlock was there, as long as he lingered, he wouldn’t just be hurting himself, slowly Darkening and losing everything that made him who he was… But he would be hurting John as well... And that, that was not good.

“I don’t want to be dead anymore, John…”

He didn’t turn but when John came around the chair to look at him with wide eyes Sherlock turned his face up and there was something clear in his eyes where before it had always been clouded and hazy and not quite right.

John’s stomach clenched and he found it suddenly hard to breathe. “Sherlock,” He swallowed down a bitter taste in his throat, “You can’t. Being dead is… is kind of final.”

John had only seen Sherlock cry once, angry terrified tears in Dartmoor, but this—this was something completely different. His heart skipped a beat and he knew. This was it.

_At this moment you are his tether. I know it hurts, I know you need him and you want him back but this isn’t right, John and you know it… If you love him, you need to let him know it’s OK to move on._

John Watson had never really considered himself a brave man he merely did what needed to be done. He didn’t consider that brave, just practical. His hands shook as he sat the letter aside and eased himself to his knees in front of Sherlock’s chair. He swallowed the burn in his throat and the ache in his chest and reached out, placing his hand on the arm rest where Sherlock’s seemed to be, their eyes locked. “It’s OK, Sherlock.”

It was a warm feeling. Bitter sweet, beautiful and so bright, so real Sherlock wanted to submerge himself in it.

Deep down, in some hidden secret part of himself, he had always been afraid of dying, of everything he was blinking out like a flame in the wind, to be nothing, to cease to exist. He had come to the conclusion years and years ago that death broke down everything a person was and returned it to dust and that the idea of a soul was preposterous, Sherlock Holmes was a mind, his body was transport there was nothing else. Over the past four and a half months—had it really only been that long? Three alone in the flat going mad and merely a short month of John aware of him… It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough! But it HAD been enough to change his thoughts on the subject completely.

There is more than this… More than mind and transport… I don’t know if it’s a soul, but there is something more…

He remembered standing on the rooftop, knowing that it was wrong, knowing that it would hurt and hurt John in turn, but believing it was alright, it was worth it because John would be safe. It would END and John would be safe. John had observed him long enough, had learned what Sherlock had explained to him and could do The Work himself if only he had the confidence. Sherlock Holmes may die, but John Watson would live and he would make sure that They paid for what they had done.

Not revenge, not vengeance… but justice. John had proven he was brave enough to kill for Sherlock… Now he had to prove he was brave enough to live without him.

He couldn’t think… Oh, GOD why couldn’t he think?

“It’s alright, Sherlock… Go on… It’s OK, I promise,” John’s face was wet and his expression said it wasn’t alright but that electric JOHN feeling that coursed through where they touched said that yes… Yes it’s OK. _I’ll miss you—I’ll mourn you like no other, but it’s alright because I believe and if you can’t I’ll believe enough for both of us._

Sherlock felt himself nodding, felt the words forming on his lips but there was no sound; _‘Stay, please stay… for me, stay.’_ Because he could hear John’s thoughts, feel the ideas forming in his head and the sadness in his heart. A gun and one bullet…

John tried to push the thoughts aside, hide them. Sherlock didn’t need to know, he could do it and that would be the end he didn’t have to know.

Sherlock’s hand felt cold, like the breath of air off an ice cube. Intangible but enough to cause a chill as it hovered just a scant millimetre from the side of John’s face. _Please… Please, stay._

John tried futilely to shove the thoughts back, but Sherlock was looking at him—Asking—not laziness or manipulation, but asking with everything he was—

Stay, John… Please.

He choked and bowed his head in shame, but nodded… _Yes, for you… I’ll stay._

Sherlock leaned closer, as if he could feel more than John’s energy, as if he could collapse into his solid, living embrace. He took a deep breath and relaxed.

Thought ceased…

He could hear it building softly from everywhere at once, drowning out the sound of the street, drowning out everything but John’s voice, his fears and thoughts.

What happens when you die? Is everything you are completely erased leaving nothing but a corpse and memories in the minds of those who’ve survived you? And after they’re gone, it’s like you never existed at all… Is there an afterlife? Heaven? Hell? If there is, do you retain anything of who you are on earth, or are your own memories merely biological, something completely separate from your soul and therefore lost upon death, leaving a free floating speck to drift endlessly in nothingness…

Or, perhaps like SHE had told John not so very long ago, perhaps death just returns you to the whole and surrendering everything you are, your memories and hopes and dreams and everything you’ve experienced on earth is the price you must pay to achieve peace. That Hell isn’t actually some fiery pit but in truth the indecision and fear of letting go.

Sherlock didn’t close his eyes when he fell back into the nothingness, they were open until the very last, John’s touch on his arm an anchor, while the very electric charge of his intent was a compass.

Yes, if giving up everything he was meant an eternity of this feeling—whatever it was that John actually felt for him, then Sherlock could do that… Yeah. That—that would be OK.

He saw the blue of John’s eyes in the night sky through a window and heard the soft rasp of his voice in the roar of a waterfall. _It’s OK, Go on… I-I love you, Sherlock…_

0-0-0

It was dim here and heavy. The window was dark but the moon was nearly full and he could see the silvery blue of water arching into the abyss.

_John…_

“Sherlock?”

0-0-0

0-0-0


	10. Chapter 10

**EPILOGUE** ;

Mrs. Hudson cried into his shoulder for hours and he bit back his own tears for twice as long.

The flat seemed empty, hollow.

“He-he might come back! You don’t know that!” Mrs. Hudson said in a rasp, she shook her head in disbelief when John told her that he wouldn’t and she refused to remove Sherlock’s things from 221B, refused to even so much as close the bathroom cupboard because he had opened it last. She went up, every other day and dusted, talked quietly to the walls about her day and that she knew he was there it was silly to keep hiding when she knew he was there, she’d seen him after the car crash, he’d looked right at her and asked if she was alright.

John packed his things after he was sure she would be OK on her own and on a whim, gave Mrs. Turner the message Sherlock had told him about from her mother.

“You should have worn the blue dress…”

She burst into tears, smiling so happily even as she wept, dragging John down into a hug and almost choking him. She pressed her hands to his face and pushed the hair off his forehead and promised to check in on Mrs. Hudson every day. Every single day!

John took a train back to Sussex.

He stayed with Greg in Charlie’s guest house for a while. He smiled and when prompted played with Greg’s niece and nephews. He went to town and had a pint every so often and got work in the local clinic. Everything was smooth and uneventful for two months, where upon Greg was called back to London and his position at NSY reinstated with full privileges.

Charlie and Dick, whose real name turned out to be Gerald, got a divorce and Charlie entertained the idea of going out with John for a while, but it didn’t work and they remained friends enough to have a pint every so often. John took out a small flat above the Pub and began taking walks through town every evening to pass the time. Or perhaps out onto the Downs to sit and stare over the water or down on the beach. Often he found himself on Iris Jade’s doorstep and she invited him in for tea.

He was moved in with her within six months.

For a year things were good… Things were very, very good. Then John woke one morning to her little hand on the side of his face and when he looked into her eyes they both knew.

The funeral was quiet, small and simple. Greg showed up with Molly and with a sad smile they showed John a sonogram image and said she was due in May. Molly smiled in that timid dimpled way of hers and said she and Greg wanted to name him Elliot, since they all knew Sherlock would have been immensely irritated at being a child’s direct namesake. ‘Confusing’ was the term that came to mind. John thought Elliot was a suitable tribute, after one of Sherlock’s more rarely used disguises, Molly said he was doing it simply because He really would have hated it. John rolled his eyes and said that He would have pretended to hate it, but it would have given him a big head… well, bigger than normal.

Charlie sent him food and asked if he wanted to talk. Mrs. Hudson came, patted his hand and helped him tidy the house and things were quiet. Even Harry came for a few days and was almost peaceful, rubbing a hand between his shoulders when he needed it and reminding him to eat.

Greg came down every other weekend over the next six months and on the second or third trip told him Mycroft had appeared back in London about eight months before and had given Mrs. Hudson a large cheque to cover the rent on 221B indefinitely, but that he’d gone off again soon enough.

John nodded and said nothing more.

Greg called in the middle of May, nearly two in the morning to be exact laughing and happily saying in a teary voice that he was a father. Molly was doing very well and Baby Elliot had a full head of dark hair, then there were a sequence of mobile phone images of the wrinkly red faced infant that lasted well into the next week when mother and child were allowed to go home and Molly forbid him from taking pictures of her nursing.

John thought it was for the best.

Things were quiet after that and winter came around again, Christmas was quiet. Mrs. Hudson went on holiday to visit her friends in Florida. Molly, Greg and Elliot stayed home and enjoyed their first Christmas as a family. John had a pint with a few of his co-workers and happily wore the jumper Mrs. Hudson had made for him. He went to services and sat in the back garden under a thick quilt and talked to the stars until well past midnight, then slept most the next day in the big empty bed.

New Year was quiet in much the same fashion, he stayed up to watch the fireworks on telly and celebrated alone, having declined the invitation to the village party, he could hear laughing and poppers going off in the dark toward town. He felt oddly at peace with the warm silence of the little cottage and slept without dreams.

It was sometime in late January as John was walking home one evening from work, when he noticed tire tracks and foot prints in the snow on the path leading to the door. They approached, and went away again so he didn’t expect much. Not until he got onto the porch and opened the door.

Someone had stuffed a large envelope through the letter slot and when he picked it up it felt quite heavy. There was no address or name on it, so he sat it aside and didn’t bother with it until morning. It had snowed some more and he built up the fire and went about making his breakfast. He had the day off from the clinic and thought he might try out the pottery wheel in the back room… SHE had showed him a few times and they’d wound up covered in clay slurry and laughing into kisses. He thought he might try his hand at making a tea pot and cup set for Mrs. Hudson’s birthday.

When he looked outside there were tire tracks by his front gate. It wasn’t unusual, the gate led to the street, but these tracks had pulled off into the little drive and back onto the road again.

John sat down to his morning tea and opened the envelope. It was a medical file… _Ah, for work then._ _A consultation?_

Male, Caucasian. Age approximately thirty-five. Sigerson, Ivan… Rock climber, fell fifty feet. Traumatic brain injury, crushed vertebrae, right arm broken in five places, clavicle broken and protruding through the skin. Right leg shattered, three broken ribs, massive damage to the bowel and small intestine from fractured pelvis… Patient was pronounced Dead on Impact but heartbeat and respiration were restored and he remained comatose for one-hundred-twenty-two days, currently undergoing intense physical therapy. Minimal neurological damage… Patient can communicate with only minor difficulty. Mild aphasia, moderately affected hand-to-eye coordination, full hearing loss in right ear, minor vision loss in left eye from blood clot caused by head injury… Overall chance of full recovery 40/60…

John wasn’t a neurologist… Why would someone send him this file?

He held the X-rays up to the light, before and after shots of a compacted fracture of the right humerus, obviously compound from the angle of the bone. The right femur and tibia were both similarly broken. Each pieced back together with external fixators, then pins and screws. A badly broken and dislocated pelvis patched back together with plates and wire, the hip joint completely replaced. Ribs wired back into alignment, three crushed vertebrae removed and replaced with sturdy wire mesh and steel rods.

The cranial X-rays were the worst. The man’s skull had been broken like an egg shell, bits had been cut away for swelling, John could imagine the hell of that. Five to nine months partially sedated with one’s brain hidden only by the thickness of their skin, the removed portion of skull sewn into the abdominal cavity so it could heal, then after the swelling was gone and the brain damage healed as much as possible, the ‘cap’ was replaced… There was a metal plate as well, to cover an area of the skull too badly damaged to be pieced back together.

“Christ, and he’s got seventy-five per-cent chance of complete recovery?” John felt a strange tingle on the back of his neck. He rubbed it, then turned toward the window.

John felt his stomach tighten and his heart jumped into his mouth like something foreign and alive, hell bent on choking him to death.

There was a man on his stoop.

He was thin and wearing a thick coat with a hood, though his back was turned John caught a hint of short unremarkable looking reddish brown hair and crutches shoved up under arms. He got the impression the crutches were new, because the man was standing heavy on one side and flicked thin pale fingers in the air, signalling to the car in the drive. It pulled away without preamble and the man settled his weight, head turning slowly to take in the snow covered lawn and the stillness of the street.

John answered the door as if in a dream.

The man turned slowly, crutches clicking… There was a pink teardrop of a scar dipping below his hairline and dents on the bridge of his nose— _new glasses—he hates them, won’t wear them but he has to_. His mouth opened to speak but a hand was lifted, finger raised in warning.

Don’t, that finger said. Just DON’T.

John lowered his hand and stood there for a moment just staring. His heart pounded in his throat, his voice built readying to scream, to make use of every swear word he knew and some he made up right on the spot. Heated words, anger and fear and betrayal and confusion.

_It’s not possible… It—It’s just not possible!_

_No… Watson, calm down…_

_Comatose, one-hundred twenty-two days, minimal neurological damage. It fits… it fits. Coma patients describe out-of-body experiences quite often, confirming events they had no way of knowing unless they’d been there…_

_THINK, Watson, THINK!_

John took a slow deep breath, his hands shaking and looked the man on his stoop up and down, taking in every new scar, every wrinkle of fabric and splash of mud on new shoes. He felt his brows draw down, his eyes closed in thought.

For three seconds there was nothing.

The edge of John’s mouth drew up in amused realization and something warm blossomed in his chest, eyes flicking up to meet those of his guest.

“Austria or Switzerland?”

0-0-0

0-0-0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you'd like to see the sequel.


End file.
